


Don’t Panic

by Gobetti



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts, Torture, non-sburb AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-21
Updated: 2013-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-24 20:02:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,034
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267319
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gobetti/pseuds/Gobetti
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The task given to me would’ve been a lot easier if only I wasn’t the only person in this building to care about these aliens’ lives.</p><p>The moment I first stepped into the cold lab and saw them, only one thing came to my mind:</p><p>I need to get them out of here. And fast.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Mostly Harmless](https://archiveofourown.org/works/204018) by [inverts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inverts/pseuds/inverts). 



> A big, colossal thanks to Inverts for allowing me to write the story before "Mostly Harmless", and for helping me make this fanfic as perfect as possible.

“Oh, hello, John! I have been expecting you. Please, sit down. And close the door behind you.”

Slowly, I pulled the doorknob behind me until it was securely closed. I stepped forward, sitting down on the padded chair before the big mahogany desk, where a man wearing a black suit with a red tie – a man that I have never seen before in my life, not even in the base – rested his folded hands atop a neat pile of documents. He had a soft smile, and I couldn’t help but smile back, trying to be nice. I was extremely eager to know what he wanted with me.

“So. John. Do you know why you’re here?”

“Um… I was told you wanted to offer me a new task in the base, is that right?”

The man’s smiled widened and he nodded.

“Yes, yes, exactly, my young boy! See, I was told you were very bright, but above bright, you were trustable. Your superiors have found you capable of keeping your mouth zipped if you are required to. Am I right, John?”

I nodded, feeling my stomach twist up an uncomfortable knot.

“Yes, sir. I’m not the kind of person to go around telling other people’s secrets.”

“Hmm, good, good, exactly what I wanted to hear. Now, tell me, John. How would you like…” the man grabbed a pen sitting by the desk and pointed directly at my chest with it; I flinched, and he grinned, raising a brow. “…to be responsible for a top-secret job? A very important one, as a matter of fact?” he wiggled said eyebrow, placing the pen atop the pile of documents. “It would also mean a big, fat raise in your internship salary.”

I widened my eyes. I was pretty sure he could see a spark of glee in them by the look on his face. Being able to be a part of a very tight circle of a top secret inside the base, and also getting a raise? I started to wonder just  _how much_ they were talking about, and all the movies and all the better food I could buy with said raise. The man stood there for those three seconds I took between staring at him, trying to take in what he had just told me, trying to believe my own ears; I slowly bared my teeth in an honest smile and straightened my back on the chair.

“Oh, that sounds really nice, actually! I’m totally in for it!”

“Great! I knew you wouldn’t pass this life-time opportunity, John!” The man exclaimed, leaning closer to me and pushing my shoulder with the tip of his fingers playfully. I giggled and pulled my wheeled chair closer to the table as the man started to rummage through his papers. “Now, here’s the thing. The place where you’ll be working at is a really top secret place. Only fifteen persons in this building know about it – and it is soon to become sixteen.”

The man pulled a white sheet of paper, still warm from the printer, and handed it to me.

“This is your contract. If you accept this job, John, you can’t give up on it halfway. You will have to keep doing it until your services are no longer necessary.”

“Um, but what the job is about? I mean, what will I have to do?”

“See, John, that’s the tricky part. I can’t tell you anything about it until you’re in. But rest assured that it is completely safe, and that it’s nothing complicated either. Evenfive years-old could do it.” He raised his head to look at me; my smile was long gone; I sure didn’t like the idea of agreeing to do something I had no clue of. I was concerned and seriously having second thoughts. “Don’t worry about it, John.” He told me softly, and I looked right into his eyes.“As long as you can keep it a secret, you’ll do just fine.”

He used his huge hairy hand to push the blue pen towards me. I stared at it and glanced at the contract in my hands. It was pretty fucking long, written with a size eight font, most probably, and filled with fine lines. “Take your time, my boy. Read the contract carefully; I am, if nothing, a very patient person.”

And so I did. I placed the paper over the desk and leaned in closer, carefully reading and re-reading every single paragraph and registering the words in the back of my mind as if they were being carved in stone. It all sounded very serious – way too serious, actually. Whatever they were going to tell me, I realized I would be in deeper than deep trouble if I ever told anyone about it, and the contract made it look like I wouldn’t just get away with a slap on the wrist. The last line, however, mentioned the addition to my monthly salary, which almost made me fall back on my seat. I glanced at the man, who was scribbling in a crossword book.

“Um…”

“Yes, John?” he asked, raising his brown eyes from behind his small reading glasses.

“…what if I can’t do the job properly?”

The man shook his head and took his glasses off, placing his book down.

“Rest assured that when I say that this job is way too simple, I am telling the truth, John. You couldn’t find yourself an easier job even if you looked all around for it.”

“But…” I looked back at the contract, then again at the suited man. It didn’t make any sense. “If it’s something  _that_  easy, then why are you willing to pay me this much to do it? Couldn’t, you know, anyone else do it instead of me?”

The man smiled an almost evil grin. For some reason, that smile sent cold shivers up my spine. I didn’t like it.

“We have our reasons, mister Egbert. It is up to you to get to know them.”

 

——

 

My initial apprehensiveness was slowly fading away with each step we took, but my nerves were a mile per hour.

As we walked down the long, white corridor on an underground area of the base, I started feeling lightheaded. I could barely hold back my excitement of being the holder of a top secret, and this whole thing just looked too much like a sci-fi movie. It was as if I was walking down a hallway to meet with the Matrix’s oracle, and she was about to tell me that I’m still asleep and I have to wake up. But I knew I was wide awake, and this was definitely real.

As we approached the end of said hallway, the only sound besides my loud heart beat and my heavy breathing were the  _clack, clack, clack_ of his shiny black shoes and the  _thump, thump, thump_  of my running sneakers; when we were halfway through, the suited men turned to face me and slowed down his own pace.

“Tell me, John. Do you believe in life outside earth?”

 _Jackpot._

“Yeah, actually, I do!” I answered, smiling widely and sounding too much like a young child who just got offered a tasty treat. I cursed my own silliness in the back of my head, but the man just chuckled and kept talking.

“Good, so this won’t be too hard for you to process, hopefully.” He said, facing the end of the corridor; covering the whole wall was a huge dark window, which allowed us to see the inside of the room behind it. I noticed a few people, all dressed in white lab coats and wearing masks over their mouths, walking around and doing their chores. And I could also see what seemed to be four tables with huge and long dark things on top of them.

It was official. My heart was making its way towards the back of my throat, and that’s how I’d die. I could even see the writing they’d make on my stone: John Egbert. Chocked with his own heart. Try not to be so overjoyed next time, kiddo.

One of the men inside the room noticed our presence and opened the door to what seemed to be a biology lab mixed with a surgery room; he raised the hand that wasn’t holding the doorknob at the two of us.

“Mister Hikes! Welcome!” came his muffed voice from behind the mask. We stopped right in front of him and he removed his transparent glove, smeared with a dark blue liquid, to shake mister Hikes’ hand.

“Ah, hello, Joshua. I knew you would be here today. So, this-” and he placed a heavy hand upon my right shoulder; Joshua looked at me, examining my body from head to toes. “-is the young boy I told you about. Very enthusiastic about all of this, if I may add.” He leaned in closer to the man, a playful grin upon his lips. “Believes in aliens too.”

“Haha, I see, I see. Hi there! You’re John, right? John Egbert?” he asked, and we shook hands as well.

“Yes, that’s me.”

“I heard quite a bit about you, man. Only good things, too. Are you liking your internship?”

“Uhhh… yeah, I, um. I’m really liking it, I really am. It’s, uh, pretty cool. I mean, it’s a real good opportunity, and, uh…” I stuttered, and the guy laughed at my awkwardness.

“Hahaha, no need to be shy, John! Come on, come on in, come take a look at what’s awaiting you. These specimens are so great, you will not believe your eyes. I barely believed my own the first time I saw them.”

He stepped out of the way so I could get inside, and I looked around in awe. The place smelled like a hospital; clean and sterilized… and also something else I couldn’t quite make out. Divided in four parts of the room were four metal tables, each one of them with what looked like grey people with shiny black hair lying down on top of them – no, scratch that. They were  _strapped_ to the tables from every possible limb by metal restrains: onto their foreheads, wrists, forearms, thighs, ankles, chest,  _everywhere_ , but one of them had restrains only on his chest, wrists and ankles, for some odd reason. The grey aliens, I noticed with awe, had  _horns_. Yellow and orange shaded horns, long and short and weirdly shaped, and their long fingers had sharp looking claws the exact same shade of yellow. The four horned alien with little restrains was tightly blindfolded with what seemed like a modified diving mask, just like the female one lying in the table in the far right corner of the room. They weren’t wearing any clothes, completely naked from head to toes, and their bodies showed what seemed to be nasty cuts and bruises all over, each specimen with wounds of a different color. The blindfolded ones even had stitches. I frowned, wondering why the specimens needed stitching in the first place.

There was a weird dark blue liquid, identical to the one on Joshua’s glove, dripping down from the table behind the one right in front of me; the skin of the bulky alien with long horns glistened in the dim light with what seemed to be water, and a young woman walked away from the wall cabinet she was roaming through to stop beside said alien, leaning down to keep working on the open cut on the creature’s side. A third man stood next to her, holding a small tray with surgical tools, all smeared in that same blue fluid – I noticed with a shiver that it was blood –, but nothing,  _nothing_ prepared me for what was about to happen.

When the woman’s instrument touched the inside of the alien’s flesh, I saw him flinch as he silently cried out, a sound filled with pure pain and despair.

I widened my eyes with shock and glanced at the creature on the table before me.

Slowly but surely, the nubby horned alien was  _breathing_ ; his chest rose and fell with every shallow breath he took, and I could see his brows move behind the messy tangle of his black locks every time the blue blooded alien let out another whimper.

I froze; he noticed my gasp, and I cursed myself for it. The alien opened his eyes just a little, the white in his eyes as yellow as the nails on his hands, and his iris a dark red, almost black even, nearly indistinguishable from his dark black pupils; he watched me closely from his half lidded eyes.

He looked tired. Defeated. A little annoyed, even. But mostly tired and beaten up. Like he just wanted to  _give up_.

My look must’ve been of pure horror right then.

These people weren’t simply autopsying specimens like I originally thought they were.

They were experimenting with  _living and breathing creatures_.

Mister Hikes came from behind me and hugged me by my shoulders, as if one would do to their loving nephew. “Eh? What do you think?” he asked, shaking me a little bit too enthusiastically. I didn’t dare to look at him in the eyes, and instead kept staring at the alien’s. “Isn’t this exciting?”

“They’re alive.” I whispered, more to myself than to him. He laughed and let go of me, taking a few steps forward until he was standing next to nubby horns’ table.

“Of course they’re alive! Alive and kicking, if I may add! Mostly kicking than alive, too.” The man exclaimed, chuckling with gusto of his own twisted joke, and the sound of his laughter mixed with the blue blooded alien’s cries of pain made my stomach do an uncomfortable flip. I felt bile rising up to the back of my mouth. Was the creature feeling the woman poking his insides? It sure sounded like it, and the red eyed alien glared at mister Hikes, a low, threatening growl escaping his throat. I shivered with the animalistic sound, but nobody else in the room seemed to mind him. “Oh, shut up!” the suited man exclaimed, glaring back at the alien. In response, he stopped his growling, but I could hear him murmur something. It sounded a lot like “fuckass”. I widened my eyes at him, but he simply closed his own and pretended to be asleep.

“Amazing, isn’t it, John?” Joshua exclaimed, putting on a new glove on his bare hand. “They’re truly remarkable, these aliens. We’ve been trying to learn just how exactly they work since the day we captured them, but our anesthetics don’t work on their systems. We didn’t want to risk having one of them dying on us, so we were researching a new substance that might work with these things. We did snoop around a little, though; the little fuckers deserved after they killed half of our men on the mission.”

I felt my legs shake underneath my weight, and it took all I had to not fall over.

They really were examining the creatures in  _cold blood_.

 “W-what…” I stuttered, realizing that my mouth had gone dry. I gulped and licked my lips, trying to form the words a second time. “…what will I have to do?”

“Hey, don’t worry, man.” Joshua exclaimed, placing his clean hand on my shoulder. “No need to be scared; they haven’t tried to escape for a few months now. They’re stranded real hard to these tables, so they’re not going to hurt you or anything; they’re harmless.”

“ _Mostly_  harmless, Joshua.” The girl in the back of the room corrected him, not diverting her eyes from her work. He snickered and nodded in agreement.

“Yes, yes,  _mostly_. Just… try to keep your limbs as far away from their mouth and hands as possible, and you’re good.”

And that’s when it hit me: the man thought I was scared of the aliens. Well, I mean, who could blame him. I bet that these things probably looked pretty damn scary when up and snarling, baring their pointy teeth at us. But like this? They were pitiful. The looked like wild animals who didn’t know what they had done to deserve this horrible fate. All I wanted was to let them go of their restrains and set them loose in the wild or something, so they wouldn’t suffer the way they were anymore.

In a way, Joshua was right. I was pretty fucking scared.

But not of the aliens.

“So, John. All you’ll have to do is clean the aliens up after our doctors”, mister Hikes told me, and I saw the nubby horned alien slightly opening his eyes and glaring at him from between his thick eyelashes. “There’s a plastic basin in the counter underneath the sink, and a pile of clean cloths. Every single day they’ll come here to work on these creatures, and after they’re done, well, that’s when you come in.” he placed a hand on the inside of his jacket and pulled out a small device. “They’re going to beep you as soon as they’re getting ready to leave, so you can come here and do your thing. Your access card is already allowed to unlock these doors.”

“Also,” Joshua added, “if you’re free, you can come down here whenever and watch us do your job, if you like. It’s pretty interesting, if you don’t mind a little blood.”

In the back of my mind, something told me I should thank the guy, but the words got stuck somewhere deep inside me, along with my breath. I nodded, taking the pager from mister Hikes’ hand and I examined the small device with a blank look.

I remembered the man’s words just before I signed the contract. I was in this for good. I couldn’t change my mind, even if I wanted to. But then again, if I gave up on this task, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to sleep anymore, thinking about these aliens.

Somehow, in the back of my mind, I knew that they were my responsibility from now on, since these guys didn’t care about their safety or well being  _at all_.

“I’ll be paging you for your first chore tomorrow night, John. Don’t be late.”

Somehow, I knew I had to get them all out of here. And  _fast_.

—-

To say that I couldn’t sleep was an understatement. Maybe I dozed off a few times, but I was still aware of my surroundings, so I didn’t really rest at all. I stared at the ceiling of my apartment, sighing and letting every single bit of information that was revealed to me this afternoon sink into my system.

It was hard. It was hard, and these people talked about the poor aliens trapped inside the cold lab as if they were nothing but puppets meant to entertain them. Puzzles to be solved. A new land to be conquered and explored. Not living creatures being tortured and violated. These people seemed to believe they were above all, that they were doing nothing wrong; that as long as these creatures didn’t belong to this planet, their actions were justified.

I glanced at the small pager on my nightstand and it all came back to me. The cold grin mister Hikes gave me when I asked him about what kind of service I would be doing; the laugh he made when he joked about how the creatures were struggling to remain alive.

I shut my eyes closed and decided to try and concentrate real hard in falling asleep for at least an hour before the sunrise; but whenever I did, all I could see were the sad yellow and red eyes of the alien staring back at me.

 _Fuck_.

I’m going to need a lot of coffee tomorrow.

—-

When I least expected, I was facing the white door to the lab once again.

I’m pretty sure Joshua and his assistants passed by me and said something that my brain couldn’t really process. Already inside it, I walked rapidly towards the cabinets without taking so much as a glance at the aliens, convincing myself to not look directly at them, to just wipe their skin and the table and that would be it and he I’d be done and maybe tonight I’d get some well deserved rest.

Holding the white soft cloth with more strength than needed, I turned the tap open, filling half the basin with clear water. I turned around, deciding to clean the muscled alien first, and froze in place when I realized that he wasn’t there. Only the three other tables remained, the creatures in them looking the same as they did the night before, and my heart thumped a little louder. I wondered if he was in the room five, like they asked me to clean up earlier.

The nubby horned troll was looking at me again. At least the best way he could without moving his head, still trapped in the hard surface of the table. I asked myself just for how long he was stranded like that, and I realized the horrible extent of the torture they were enduring. Holding the heavy water filled basin with all the strength I could muster, I felt my hands shake a little and my heart beat accelerate as I thought of what I was about to do. I didn’t think too much about it, because I knew that if I did, I probably would give up. The creature followed me with wary eyes as I approached him and kneeled down beside his head, quickly finding the clip for his restrains underneath the table. Within a few seconds, the metallic straps were open.

“I hope this feels a little better.” I told him, slowly getting up and making sure I was as far away from the partially free troll as possible. His eyes, threatening and suspicious before, were wide with shock and befuddlement. He tried moving his head, testing the sore muscles of his neck, and groaned, probably because they felt sore and stiff. But soon he was able to completely turn his head side to side, and I smiled with relief. After the initial glee of being partially free, the troll looked back at me, his look able to burn a hole through my head. I sighed.

“…Look, I’m sorry. For everything. For everything that was done to you guys here. For what they did to you. For what  _we_  did to you.”

The troll simply stared at me, and I bowed my head. Slowly, I reached for the damp cloth and made my way to his torso, slowly wiping off any signs of dried blood over his skin. The creature flinched whenever I rubbed too hard at a particular sore spot, and I profusely apologized every time, which made him stare at me all the while with a puzzled and mean expression.

When I finished with his legs, arms and torso, I glanced at his face and noticed a few blotches of red blood on his neck and cheek, some of them from probably struggling with his restrains, and I hesitated.

“Is it okay if I wipe your face too?”

The alien bared his fangs at me, and growled low and deep as I tried to approach him with the cloth. Immediately, I pulled my hand back, and he began shouting incomprehensible words in what seemed to be his native language. I widened my eyes as I heard the mix of growls and clicks and chippers, his grey tongue furiously dancing and twirling behind the sharp fangs, and I jumped when I heard a mean and loud cackle coming from behind me. The alien girl was laughing, laughing with enthusiasm, loud and scandalous, her mouth wide open as her chest and belly shook in the rhythm of her laughter. When red eyes became silent, she added a few weird growls to her laughter as well, her chest rising and falling as she practically spit out hateful words towards him. When she was done, he snarled back at her, and this went on for about a minute, one shouting and snapping at the other, the girl slowly losing her cocky grin, and when her expression was about half serious, her smile only a soft upturn of her lips, she sighed, her laughter finally subsiding.

I felt cold water drip down on my feet from holding the damp cloth too tightly against my chest. I was horrified. It was like they were going to jump off from the tables and attack each other, such was the bitterness in their undistinguishable words. After a minute of dead silence, the four horned troll spoke up. This time I really yelped, startled about the fact that he could actually speak and move at all, but the three of them promptly ignored me as if I wasn’t even there. He turned his head towards nubby horns, his voice low and his speech dragged, and whatever he had said, it didn’t please the other alien. He furrowed his brows in deep thought and, after a minute, turned his head to look at me.

His once thoughtful expression turned to a full glare, and the alien snarled at me, showing me the full extent of his pointy fangs. Slowly, the worst chill I have ever felt in my life ran down my spine as I thought about how sharp these things were, and how would it feel like to have one of my fingers ripped off from between these white daggers.

“I, uh, okay, I’ll… I’ll just go do something else while you talk to each other, okay? I’ll-I’ll be right back.” I stuttered, slowly walking backwards towards the door; when I turned around, trying to run off as quickly as possible, my nose was an inch away from the solid wall of the lab; I yelped, getting a mocking laugh from the female alien, and made my way to the open door, feeling a blush spreading to the tip of my ears.

Facing the empty white hallway again, completely silent and lit by the artificial lights in the ceiling, I noticed how fucking creepy the whole scenario was. There I was, all alone with four aliens, who were threatening and dangerous and who obviously disliked me, in a secret level of an almost empty building in the middle of the night. Oh, and one of them was missing, too! So cliché.  Looked around; it was hard to decide whether the lack of windows was a good or bad thing. I felt like I was inside a bad horror movie, which was probably the worse of all, because there I was, breaking the first essential rule of horror movies: never,  _ever_  be left alone, or go inside empty rooms on your own. I gulped, shaking a bit, trying to gather enough courage to move my feet and see if I could find the room number five.




It wasn’t hard to find it; each door had a number. The number five was only two doors away from the main lab, and I slid my access card on the pad to unlock it.

And, surely, there he was, just like I imagined he’d be. The missing alien was on his metal table in the middle of what seemed to be a complete surgical room. A smaller table, exactly like the ones from ER or something, was right next to him, and it had a few different looking tools; they were all dirty too, which indicated that people had poked and prodded the alien yet again today; the thought made my stomach churn uncomfortably. Without bothering to turn the lights on, since the lights coming from the hallway seemed good enough for me, I carefully approached the creature.

He was too still. This frightened me. My first thought was to touch his thick neck and check for a pulse, but my eyes darted down to the black cloth covering him from his shoulders all the way down to his knees. It wasn’t much the cloth that baffled me, but its color; why would anything in a surgery room not be white? Slowly, I reached for it and uncovered the alien’s chest, to see-

Oh, shit.

Oh,  _shit_.

 _Oh shit oh shit oh shit shit **shit**!!!_

Nothing –  _nothing_  could ever prepare me for what I saw. The troll’s chest was cut open, the muscles once there nowhere to be seen, and the brief sight of his ribs and guts made me sick in a way I had never felt before. I could feel the tangy taste of bile and the noodles I had for dinner on the back of my mouth; I gagged, turned my head away and stumbled backwards, trying to walk out of the room as fast as I possibly could.

I hit the table with the tools on my frantic escape, and it made a horribly strident clanging noise when the back of my legs dropped the whole thing down. When I turned around, startled by the loud sound, my feet slipped on something slick and I fell on my side against the cold floor.

The floor, only now I realized, wasn’t white near the alien’s table.

It was coated in dark blue.

And now, so was my right arm and my hands and my hair and my clothes—

My brain went into full panic mode. Somehow, I managed to get to my feet and run towards the lab where the other trolls waited for my return. I flung the door open, never unlocking my gaze from the sink, and I practically threw myself at it, clutching to the counter as if my life depended on that tight grip. Immediately, I threw up the few contents of my sick stomach inside it, feeling the rusty taste of blood on the back of my sore throat whenever I coughed, and now my whole body was shaking violently with pure horror and nausea. I stared at my hands; my pale fingers were coated in that dark, dark blue, the alien’s blood now smeared all over the smooth rocky surface of the furniture, the thin coat of liquid slowly drying in my fingers and dripping down from the arm that broke my fall. I gagged again, spitting red blood onto the sink, and gasped for much needed air that just didn’t seem to be going through my lungs in enough quantities.

When I was sure that there was nothing more on my stomach to be puked, I walked away from the sink and slumped against the wall opposite to the red eyed troll, right behind where the blue blooded alien’s table used to stay. When I opened my eyes, I wasn’t at all surprised to find that he was staring at me, a look of shock mixed with maddening anger. A clear red liquid was pouring down in thick droplets from his widened eyes; I assumed they were tears from the expression on his face, and he shook his head, still not looking away from me.

“ _NO_!” He yelled, and I closed my eyes. My own tears dripped down from my face, and I dropped my head.

“I’m sorry…” I sobbed, waving my head in denial. As a response, the troll simply growled and started another long rant of incomprehensible words, the despair clearly noticeable in his voice. “I’m so sorry, oh my god… I’m so sorry…”

Slowly, I slid down the wall, crouching on the disgustingly clean floor of the lab and hugging myself tightly.

And as I sobbed quietly against my knees, mourning the death of the defenseless creature, I could hear the other two trolls doing the exact same thing.

In twenty minutes, I ended up adding about ten more reasons to not be able to sleep again.

Tonight is going to be one heck of a long night.


	2. Chapter 2

Trying to be nice with the aliens had shown to be more troublesome than expected.

After being done with everything I had to do later that night, I was faced with a horrible realization: I had to strap the red eyed troll back to his table, or the other guys would know I was showing some unwanted sympathy for them. The mere thought of it made me shudder, but I knew I had to do it. Somehow. I just didn’t know how yet.

The alien seemed to be half asleep, which was a very wrong assumption on my part. He shot his eyes open as soon as he noticed I was approaching him; I hesitated, taking the next few steps slower than usual.

Finally I stopped behind his head, trying to gather up just a little courage from somewhere, _anywhere_ , seriously, and reached for the metallic straps. Widening his eyes, the alien realized what I was about to do, and the sound he made then could only be described as a roar, almost like a lion or a tiger, only high pitched, in an obvious threat for my life. My sweaty palms were now shaky, and if anything, I thought I might pass out from nervousness right there and right then.

The next half an hour was a frustrating battle, to say the least. The alien kept waving his head furiously, and I kept trying to find a way to loop the metal bands around it unsuccessfully time after time after time. It reached a point where I had little patience left, and for half a second I literally forgot that I was, in fact, dealing with a dangerous creature, and not a stubborn child. In a careless motion, I tried to hold his forehead down to keep him still, _just for a second just for a goddamn second come the fuck **on** ,_ and the alien immediately took the opportunity: he swiftly turned his head up and, before I could even realize what was happening, bit off a piece of my thumb.

I think he must’ve felt bad for me after that because, well, I may or may not have spent the next fifteen minutes crouched in a far corner of the room, clutching my bloody hand to my chest, crying profusely and whining to myself in a very low tone. I could hear the aliens exchanging a few words, but I just ignored them, because I was just way too busy, you know, hyperventilating and stuff.

When I finally trusted my legs to be steady enough to hold me up, I begged nubby horns to cooperate with me, and to my surprise, he didn’t struggle or even snarled at me anymore; I wondered if the other two aliens had anything to do with it, if they had said something to calm him down. In the end, I was able to bind him down again, and I would’ve managed to do it in the very first try too, if only my hand wasn’t shaking like a goddamn jelly; since it was not the case, it still took me a few tries to clip the two pieces of metal together.

“I-I’ll let you go again as soon as possible, ok?” I told him, already regretting my decision to do it all again tomorrow, thinking about the safety of my fingers, _my piano fingers_ , I mean, I kind of need them, you know?! The alien had his eyes closed and his thick brows furrowed, clearly pissed – though I wasn’t sure if with me or with himself – and he pretended not to listen to me as I left.

I glanced at the alarm clock on my nightstand, eyes half open from tiredness. It read six-o-clock. I had to be up in an hour, and I wasn’t able to sleep not even for ten whole minutes.

I turned my head around, stared at my now bandaged hand and sighed heavily.

I wondered if today would be any different from yesterday.

 

 ---

 

 “Oh, hello Johnathan. Arrived early today, huh? Came to see us work?”

I froze at the door, only half listening to what Joshua just said; my attention was immediately focused on the nubby horned troll the moment I entered the room.

The three employees seemed preoccupied with their own tasks. Joshua was putting stuff away from the countertop and into cabinets and drawers, getting ready to leave, while the woman and the other man whose name I did not know yet were right next to the spiky haired alien; they were both hunched over him as she slowly moved long silver tools skillfully inside an open wound over his ribs, and the man wiped away any excess of red blood, blood identical to our own, with a crimson red cloth. Joshua didn’t look at me then, and I was glad; glad because it would be hard to ignore my trembling muscles, or the horrified expression surely plastered across my face, which was definitely, in no way, worse than the alien’s.

I don’t think I have ever seen someone with such terrible expression in my entire life, not even in movies. His eyes were shut tightly, the grey tone of his skin paler than usual, razor sharp teeth clenched so hard that I could see the muscles in his neck and jaw tensed up, probably hard as rock. His hands were tightly curled up into fists, nails surely digging onto his skin, which made even more crimson red blood stain the cold metal table, dripping down from between his fingers.

The four horned alien had his face turned to the opposite way, hands also clammed shut into fists; the alien girl couldn’t move, being as heavily restrained as nubby horns, but the awkward twist on her face meant that she was also in the same boat as I was, having a real hard time ignoring the ways the red blooded alien breathed from between the tight shut row of teeth, muffling his screams in between breaths, turning them into low, heartbreaking moans and whines of pain.

It only hit me then that I had to answer Joshua.

“No, um, actually I’m a little… weak when it comes to blood.” I told him, trying my hardest not to let my voice break and forcing my legs to move from the spot where I still stood. Joshua simply shrugged.

“Suit yourself. But, you know, you should come again when we’re ready to do some work on those other two.“ he waved his head in the other two aliens’ direction, and it was almost imperceptible, but I could see them flinching with the mere mention of their existence, “They have different blood colors. Wicked, huh? The male one is mustard yellow, and the female is a cerulean blue. It doesn’t even look like real blood if you ask me, it’s a lot more like something trashy from a bad horror movie! You just gotta think it’s fake, that it’s something else entirely. It’s not that hard, and I think that watching the surgery might be a good experience to you.”

Even though I was one to appreciate the laughs that I had from unironically bad horror movies, I couldn’t help but think that it might not be the same thing at all. Still, I felt like I needed to reply.

“I’ll… think about it.”

“You done there, Claire? I want to go hooome!” the woman’s assistant whined, his voice a bit muffled from behind his mask. She merely sighed in response.

“Yeah, yeah, just gimme the needle already, Kilee.”

As I walked away from the door and closed it behind me, I could see Kilee smiling with his eyes; the bloodied tool she handed him was taken away and placed upon the metal table, and traded for a black string and a needle – which was way too thick to be true. Way too thick. The alien took those free moments to open his eyes, looking up at the ceiling – god forgive if he ever saw what they were going to use to sew his skin back – mouth slightly open, breathing heavily for dear life; and when the woman touched his skin again with the clean tool without giving him not even an advanced notice, he closed his eyes again, red tears now streaming down the side of his face and damping his black hair. Instead of yelling, he yelped with both pain and something else, probably exhaustion, like he desperately wanted it all to be over already.

But he wouldn’t shout, no matter how many times she mercilessly stabbed his skin, pulled the black string and tightened the knot, repeating the process, over and over again. And I sort of knew why; I could see the determination and the braveness in his features, hidden behind his thick mask of agony.

He wouldn’t give her the pleasure to hear him writhe in pain.

I turned away; the sight of blood pooling over his skin was making me feel more than just a little dizzy. Kilee would constantly reach over and remove the excess of liquid to facilitate the woman’s work, and that amount of blood was probably normal from this kind of procedure, but if only the patient wasn’t squirming and whining softly under his breath, then maybe the whole thing wouldn’t look so gory to me.

I concentrated, hard, on the clear liquid running down the tap and filling the basin, fidgeting with the cloth in my hand, and then turning the tap open a bit more so the sound of the water hitting water came out over the ragged breathing of the alien. It was less than a minute until the basin was filled to the rim; when the flow of water stopped, the sounds only seemed to worsen.

“You okay, man?” Joshua asked me, throwing a denim jacket over his shoulder. I glanced at him for a brief moment and nodded, trying to give him a small smile. It still came out shaky.

“Yeah, I’m just… really tired.”

He nodded, probably believing in my story.

“Internships can be really exhausting; I know how you feel.”

I nodded back, not trusting my voice to keep up with my white lie.

“There. All done.” The woman finally declared, ripping the gloves off her fingers and the mask from her face. I turned around, believing that it was safe to divert my gaze from the water – really, Joshua would soon ask me if I was looking for something inside it or something – and then again proved myself utterly wrong.

Despite not screaming, the alien had his eyes wide open again, tears now rolling down nonstop, mouth wide open as well as he tried real hard to take deep breaths inside his constricted lungs. Joshua took a few steps closer to the alien, ignoring the creature’s features completely, and removing his own mask to reveal an approving grin.

“Wow! You did a great job there, Grace!” he said cheerfully, examining the stitches.

“Well, yeah,” Kilee mocked, already stripping out of his white jacket and reaching for a heavy coat over the counter. “the thing is still _breathing_ , isn’t it?”

“Oh, _can it_ , Kilee. You know that what happened yesterday wasn’t my fault, you insufferable doofus.”

 _Breathing_? I figured they were talking about the fourth alien, and I couldn’t help remembering him. The sight of his open carcass still fresh in my memory almost made me gag again, and I tried shoving the memories away, not to show myself shaken by them – not in front of them, at least. I reached for the inside of the sink, trying to lift the basin, with no avail – the thing was too heavy, and my hands, way too shaky. I left it where it was and turned around to look at the employees, ignoring the alien for the moment.

“Um, is it okay if I ask what happened yesterday…?”

“Of course it is, John.” The woman said, reaching for her purse and a long black coat, skillfully throwing it around her back in one swift motion. “You’re a part of the team now, don’t be so shy.”

“Yesterday…” Joshua began, placing both hands inside his jeans pockets. “Well… you do remember how we said that we were researching an anesthetic substance that would work with the aliens’ biology, right?” I nodded, and Joshua sighed, trying to find the right words. “Well, we finished the research this week, and decided to use that brawny fella to test it. And…” he shrugged, doing a face that could only be described as “meh”, and kept talking. “Well. Needless to say it didn’t work. I mean, it did, for about ten minutes, but by the time the effect wore off it was way too late. But! At least we have something to autopsy now! Isn’t that exciting?”

It took all I had to not let my jaw hang open.

 _Exactly like puppets._

“Johnathan, I don’t mean to sound rude, but it’s been a long day and I really do need to go home. We trust you to clean everything up around here for us, okay?”

“Y-y-yeah, sure, n-no problem. Don’t, don’t even, uh, worry about it.”

“All right, thanks man. See ya again tomorrow.”

And just like that, they turned around, waving at me casually as they left, closing the heavy door behind them.

I watched them walk away through the thick, dark window, and when all four of them were gone and I was left completely alone with the aliens, the first thing I did was rush over towards the poor nubby horned guy, crouch under his table and unclip his chest binders.

Immediately, I could hear him sighing, gasping, taking deep gulps of breath like ones he wasn’t able to take before. I shifted towards his head and undid those clips as well, if only to make him a bit more comfortable; he kept staring at the ceiling, even after I stood up and looked at him.

I don’t think I will ever pity anything more than I pitied him at that moment.

“This is the least I can do.” I whispered, holding back the urge to cry. I saw him glancing in my direction for a fraction of second before closing his eyes shut again, making another batch of fresh tears flow from behind his eyelids. “And I’m sorry.”

He didn’t answer, like usual, though a small part of me kind of hoped he did. I kept watching him for what must’ve been a whole hour until his breathing was slow and sort of steady again, then decided to just get over with my job already.

But cleaning him up was probably the worst.

His body felt warm, way too warm, and he was covered in cold sweat. I kept wiping him with the damp cloth and drying him up afterwards with a clean one, so he wouldn’t be cold. After I finished his whole torso, legs and arms, I stared at the fresh wound, feeling cold shivers run down my spine; the thing was still bleeding a little. With a gulp and a deep breath, I prepared myself mentally for what I was about to do.

When I walked around the table towards his wounded side, the alien peeked from  behind his eyelashes to check if I was leaving, and when he realized what I was about to do, panicked. He started trashing on the table, eyes wide and filled with despair, teeth bared at me. He started to shout in his own language, words and phrases I couldn’t wish to ever understand, but I tried not to show how scared I was of him at that moment; that was not what he needed. It wasn’t what either of us needed.

“I’m not scared of you.” I told him, a little surprised at how my voice came out, loud and firm; my shaky fists were an obvious contrast to my fake confidence. “I’m here to help you.”

The reassuring words, though, did nothing to calm the alien down.

He began shouting the moment I gently rubbed the blood off his skin, a horrible ear-splitting shrieking sound, almost as if the water burned his insides. _Fuck_. Did it? I couldn’t know, nor could I ask, because Joshua would probably just laugh and say “you don’t have to worry as long as it doesn’t kill them”; I pulled a face just remembering about that smug guy and his smug friends and their smug way of thinking, and the clear contrast they made with the desperate alien – no, desperate _boy_ ,(I swear, he didn’t seem to be not even a year older than me) – stranded to the hard table, looking helpless and lost and broken.

A boy that only wanted to go home.

By the time the blood coagulated and the stitches were clean, the alien fell silent. I wasn’t the least surprised when I realized he had passed out, probably from the pain or just from sheer exhaustion. Either one made me feel really bad for him.

When I moved to the girl, I stroke her skin gently, slowly, lost in  my own fuzzy and worried thoughts, and for the first time, I looked at her, really looked. She was skinny, so skinny, ribs poking out from under her small breasts skinny. She didn’t have nipples or a bellybutton, like the other two aliens in the room, and still, she was so tall, a lot taller than me, and so narrow and angular; she could easily be mistaken by a top model struggling with bulimia. And still…

“You’re really pretty.” I whispered, and she moved her head towards me under the metal straps. “I mean, really, really pretty. You could be a model, or an actress or something. I wonder if you were anything of the sort where you came from. I wonder if there are models in other planets. Heh, that would be pretty funny, wouldn’t it.”

Behind the blindfolds, I could feel her staring at me. With a sigh, I rubbed a bit harder onto a spot where the day prior was the string of old stitches, trying to wipe off the dried blood. She winced.

“Oh! Sorry! Oh, god, I’m really sorry! Are you okay?”

Her looks softened down, as if I hadn’t hurt her at all in the first place. I still decided to be a bit more careful.

“There. Is this better?”

She didn’t answer. I took that as a good sign.

“I wish I could understand you aliens. I wonder if you’re good people. If you came in peace to our planet and stuff like that...”

And then, out of nowhere, she cringed, lips twisting up to reveal her fangs. They were a little different from nubby horns’; her upper row of teeth were shorter, but still pointy, and her canine teeth were so long they almost made her look like a vampire. A low growl on the back of her throat snapped me out of my trance, as it indicated that I had done something seriously wrong.

“W-what is it?”

She scrunched her nose, as if she had smelled something rotten in the air, and to my astonishment, she actually spoke words I could comprehend.

“ _No_. _Alien_.” She snarled, punctuating each word as slowly as possible.

“…uuuh, come again?”

“No alien.” She repeated, a little louder and a lot more slowly. “ _Troll_.”

I paused. She just spoke to me, only to correct me, as if the word “alien” was extremely offensive.

I nodded, grinning.

“Allright. Troll. Neat.”

 

\---

 

As I resumed my task, silently and gently cleaning her rough, grey skin, I decided to keep talking, to see if anything else might trigger her to say something back to me. Sometimes she’d giggle – even at things that were not supposed to be giggled at, but it wasn’t like I wasn’t going to complain or anything –, a laugh somehow similar to the frightening cackle I heard coming form her the day prior, though a lot nicer, and I would always take those small things as a incentive to keep babbling about whatever might come to my mind. She didn’t do anything other than that, though; she didn’t answer my questions or commented on my stories. I knew two options were likely in that situation: either she didn’t want to, because she still suspected me (I mean, who could blame her), or if she simply didn’t know enough English to form sentences and keep up with a conversation. After the four horned troll was also clean, completely rid of his own sweat and covered with fresh water instead, I resumed my work with the rest of the room, washing utensils and the tiles on the floor with a huge lump of what seemed to be a lot like coal on the back of my throat. I also never ceased my monologue. Being able to talk and knowing I was being heard, though no answered per se, felt nice. Comforting, even. I liked it.

When all the things were finally stuffed away inside cabinet doors and in their respective places, I turned around, dragging a small stool towards nubby horn’s table, practically throwing myself in it and thumping my forehead on the cold metal before me, millimeters away from the alien – _troll_ , I corrected myself mentally, troll’s – arm.

Staring at the silver surface before my eyes, I paid attention to the soothing sound of his steady breathing. A deep breath. Exhale. Another deep breath. Exhale. Slowly I began noticing other small things, like the now steady and low hum of his heartbeat, the funny grumbles of his stomach contents, however little they probably were, the slight twitching of his fingers in his sleep. Suddenly, a though occurred me, and I felt my heart racing behind my ribcage.

These were not things I should pay attention to. They were not things one should find adorable or nice or sweet. They were simply… _normal_.

But still, I couldn’t keep those thoughts out of my head.

 “What is wrong with me…”

I placed both arms on the table, shivering when the cold surface made the hairs on my arm stand up, but I didn’t care; I hid my face in between them, taking in the peculiar smell of the troll’s body, feeling my eyelids becoming heavier and heavier by the second. I could tell I was starting to doze off; the realization made the lucid part of my head ask ‘who the hell sleeps next to creatures that could tear your skin like butter in the blink of an eye?’, but the part that wasn’t all that rational anymore didn’t seem to mind that little detail at all. In fact, the presence of the troll next to me, its warmth against my skin was, somehow, soothing. I was at ease around him, despise all odds, and it was so weird…

And even weirder than that was the fact that I couldn’t bring myself to care that it was weird, or dangerous, or anything.

It felt right.

And apparently, that’s all that really mattered.

“What in the world is wrong with me……..”

With a heavy sigh, I closed my eyes, ignoring both parts of my brain. Thinking was way too hard sometimes.

And for the first time in two whole days, I slept.


	3. Chapter 3

That night, weird things happened.

That night, I saw nubby horns sitting up on the table before me, naked still, his fresh wound bleeding profusely as he turned around to look down at me. The blood ran down his skin, over his ribs and bony hips, and pooled around my arms on the table. I remained still, groggy with sleep, and watched him watch me from between my folded arms, feeling the blood soak the side of my head and dampen multiple locks of my hair. He had a really blank expression for someone with such a troubling looking wound, but I didn’t seem to mind or find it odd, and returned his gaze with the same poker faced expression.

He opened his mouth and enunciated a few words. His voice was husky and low, and he spoke in his own language, so I didn’t understood him. Still, I kept staring as he kept talking, and eventually the other two trolls were talking as well, their voices in the background, resonating throughout the walls of the empty lab. The blood kept pooling underneath me, and it started dripping onto my lap and towards the floor. I didn’t even blink, and red eyes didn’t look away from me.

Suddenly, his expression changed drastically. His lips turned downwards, and he sighed heavily, making a new gush of crimson liquid spill from between the black stitches when his lungs expanded and pushed his chest outwards. His eyes were so sad, I could hardly stand it. Finally, I decided to move, never unlocking my gaze from his eyes. I straightened my back and felt the blood on the side of my face slowly running down my chin and neck, and I looked up to where he looked down.

For a few seconds, we talked in silence. Even though the troll wasn’t strapped down to the table, I wasn’t afraid of him. I wasn’t, because I somehow knew he wouldn’t hurt me. He looked at me as if I was a sick dog that he had to put down; it was so sad that I felt myself crying, a single tear rolling down my cheek, washing the blood beneath my eyes. It fell onto the metal table, becoming pastel red like his own tears, and he gave me a half smile, which could only be described as heartbreaking.

He approached me, and I couldn’t help but be amazed at how the bones of his shoulders and collarbone moved and twisted in slow motion beneath his grey skin. Soon his face was merely an inch away from mine, and I could feel his moist and hot breath coming from his parted lips, feel it in my tongue, in my skin, burning my nostrils. He cupped a hand on my face, looked at me with a desperate need, as if searching for something important there, and finally closed his eyes, bumping his forehead against my own in an unspoken defeat. His thumb was gentle and smooth against my jaw as he slowly moved it in small circles, his skin sliding easily against mine as he rubbed the blood beneath it.

All I could do then was stare at his lips.

A deep breath.

“You can trust me.” I heard myself saying, and I had no idea why.

As a response, the troll raised his upper lips and bared his fangs at me, half threateningly, half sorrowful.

He grumbled beneath his breath, and I watched with amazement as his tongue danced behind his dagger-like teeth.

Automatically, my brain translated his words.

I’m trying to. I really am.

Another deep breath.

His thumb stopped. He furrowed his brows, closed his mouth, opened his eyes to look at me, and I could feel so much sympathy eradiating from him.

And then he touched his lips gingerly against mine, only barely brushing our skin together, and in a deep and perfectly spoken English, his lips moved against my own.

“ _Wake up_.”

\---

I opened my eyes, completely frightened. When I straightened my back, I found myself looking at nubby horns, back sore as ever, arm covered in drool.

“John _, for fuck’s sake_ , what were you _thinking_??” I heard a man’s voice yell at me, and as soon as I recognized it to be Joshua’s, a hand smacked the back of my head, which made me wake up completely.

“Uh, wha…?”

“John, do you have a death wish? Or maybe you just want to be _fired_?” Claire asked from across the room, arms crossed, expression grim.

“Um…”

“Wake up already, kiddo!” Kilee shouted, and it was the first time I saw him without that stupid goofy grin, and it wasn’t very nice. “What the fuck is inside your head? _Crap_???”

“Um, wait, what— _oh_.”

I tried real hard to say something, to make anything coherent in my head to tell them, but sleep still blurred my thoughts and the weird dream burned in my mind, vivid and alive and very disturbingly _real_ , and as soon as I looked down at nubby horns and realized his head and chest were still free of his restrains, I felt my blood run cold and my mind go blank, realizing my mistake.

“O-oh, oh, I’m so sorry, I’ll, uh, I’ll fix that right away, let me just—“

“Like hell you are!” Joshua yelled, and I visibly flinched this time. I’m not used to people yelling at me. “We need you to have all ten fingers for this job function, _idiot_. Claire, go get the syringe.”

The woman nodded, and the mere look on her face before she turned around made me shiver. She opened a cabinet on the wall, pulled a syringe with a weird liquid inside, and immediately I knew that it couldn’t be anything good. When she turned around and eyed the troll, he tensed up, and instead of fighting and trashing, he froze. All I could do was stare at him in pure shock.

The hand holding the freaky looking needle approached his face, and she touched the sharp tip gingerly to his neck. At this rate, my own heartbeat was unbelievably accelerated; he tilted his chin up, widened his eyes and breathed in quick, heavy pants, as if she was holding a hot iron stick only inches away from his face. When she smiled and whispered “that’s a good boy” in a sickening mocking tone, I nearly jumped from my seat to bat that atrocity away from her hand.

Nearly.

 Meanwhile, Joshua grabbed one metal band and looped it around his head, clicking the end of it to the other side under the table. He moved over to his torso, and so did Claire, sliding the syringe all the way down to his chest, stopping where his heart should probably be and smiling like she’s having the most fun she has had in years.

I always thought that hitting woman was very wrong, but if only I had the chance, I would’ve punched Claire in the face right there and right then.

Joshua clicked the chest binders together, standing up and nodding to Claire. She spared a small glance at him, withdrawing the needle and walking smoothly over to the cabinet, the _clack clack clack_ of her high heels echoing in the lab. Joshua glared at me.

“I hope this doesn’t happen again, John. You’re a good kid, you really are – but you shouldn’t look at these things as nothing less than _worms_. They’re cold blooded murderers. We’re giving them the mercy of sparing their lives. Remember that.”

I nodded, feeling nervous. He sighed.

“Go. Come back in the evening as always. I’ll make sure not to tell anyone about this.”

I rose to my feet, mumbling a half hearted apology to everyone, and turned around, trying not to look at red eyes again.

Nobody minded my one hour delay to my other, more common daily tasks at the base – they probably knew I was in some deep shit because of my new night shift – and all in all, things went rather smoothly.

At least as smoothly as things could go, since I kept remembering fractions of the dream I had throughout the entire day.

Which is to say, not that smoothly in the end.

\---

At night, when I arrived at the lab again, things were tense. Nobody spared me a second glance, or a smile, or even a witty comment. They were all dressed up and ready to go when I walked in the room.

They waved and nodded when walking past me, and I closed the door silently, letting go of a breath I didn’t even know I was holding back.

I turned around and stared at the trolls.

There was no doubt of what I was supposed to do.

I approached nubby horns first, who was already wide awake and following my every movement with weary eyes,  and when I touched the restrains over his chest he flinched and growled at me. The sound reminded me of a pissed off lion or panther.

But surprisingly, I wasn’t really afraid. Probably because I kept remembering the way the angry little dude hyperventilated this morning. Also probably because of the odd dream, but I pushed that stubborn thought away and concentrated on the metal holding him down.

When I looked up to look at his expression, hands over the cold restrain, he was frowning while also trying to pull the most threatening look he could muster.

“ _No_.” he said, very eloquently, and I widened my eyes. He could speak English like the girl troll! How amazing!!

“Don’t worry!” I told him, moving to open the clips beneath the table, and he growled a bit softer. Maybe so he could listen to me? Probably. “I’ll make sure to put these back in place before I leave, so that what happened today doesn’t happen anymore. Just… make sure to wake me up if I end up falling asleep again, will you?” I giggle, and by the time I’ve finished unclipping his head binder, his scowl has subsided and he’s merely glaring at me. Good. Progress. I look down, and something occurs to me. I hesitate for merely half a second before unclipping the metal binders holding his entire upper torso down, and when I step back to proudly avail my work, the troll looks down a bit confused and unsure.

“Sorry I can’t really let you out completely.” I tell him, gesturing to his wrists and legs, and he looks down at the same time I point at them. “but at least you can sit up. Do you want to? I could help you out if you think--”

“ ** _No_**.” he says again, all sharp and rough, and that actually makes my heart skip a beat.

“O-okay… so, um, sit up! Let’s see how your back muscles are doing.”

He stops, looks at his torso again, and something in my chest feels sharp and painful, because… what if he can’t? What if his muscles are so atrophied he can barely move anymore? The thought scares me a lot, but before I can even consider saying anything else, maybe ask him if he’s in pain or something, his shoulders begin shaking; it’s barely noticeable at first, and it gradually gets a lot more violent, and I put my hand over my mouth to hide the smile lingering there, because _he is sitting up_ , stretching his back, testing his joints, his sore muscles and bones popping with every rough movement of his body. I sigh contently just as he stops moving completely and kind of slumps forward a bit.

“…thank you.” He whispers, and his accent and pronunciation are so weird and wrong I can barely make out what he said, but I do; hell, even if he had just grumbled a few random, unintelligible words, I would’ve know what he said right then, and it just… _damn_. My smile is so damn wide it might as well crack my face in half.

“Anytime!” I say, cheerfully, and he glances at me for a fraction of a second, returning his attention to his knees again afterwards. It’s as if he didn’t even look at me in the first place, didn’t even acknowledge my presence in the room, but I know he did.

He doesn’t like me, but most of all, he doesn’t trust me, _at all_ , and yet… I have the feeling that, eventually, he will.

Things are slowly getting better.

\---

I always knew these aliens weren’t that bad.

Even though she can’t see with the blindfold – there’s most probably a very good reason why that thing is there, so I decide that it’s better I leave it alone for the time being – she’s completely ecstatic when I release her as well. I tell her with the most simple, basic vocabulary I can muster, that I plan on doing that every day from now on, as long as they agree to be strapped back to the table before I leave, because if someone catches me on the act _again_ I probably won’t be able to come back to free them anymore. She scowls, takes a whole minute to think, expression dead serious, and eventually exchanges a few words with the skinny troll beside nubby horns. They don’t speak a lot, nor do they speak for too long, but in the end she shrugs, as if saying “meh, it’s better than nothing”. The other guy smiles a wicked, too full of teeth smile as he arches his back forward, cracking a lot more bones than humanly possible, and he seems to enjoy it so fucking much I idly wonder why the hell didn’t I do it before.

I find out that night that they have names through a slurred and complicated exchange of words while I clean them up – hers is _Vriska Serket_ , and the yellow skinned troll who rarely ever speaks tells me that his name is “ _Thollucth Captor_ ” (Vriska whispers “ _Sollux_ ” into my ear almost immediately, and I make sure to pronounce his name correctly, to what he smiles and nods in approval). When I ask nubby horn’s name though, he simply turns his head away from me, as if refusing to bond, and Vriska laughs behind me.

“Karkat.” She says to me, smiling viciously, as if savoring the words on her lips. “ _Karkat Vantas_.”

I smile at her, because _gosh_ , it feels good to have a name to go with the face!

“Karkat!” I say, and she nods, approving of my slurred, unprecise pronunciation. I turning to red eyes, excited like a little kid or something. “Karkat, Karkat, Karkat! That’s a really cool name, like “car” and “cat” put together! _Beep beep, meow!_ , Hahahaha!”

Though he clearly doesn’t get the joke – I’m kinda glad he doesn’t because I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t think it was half as funny as I do – he obviously doesn’t like the fact that I keep wasting my breath repeating his name over and over again. Vriska and Sollux don’t get my hilarious joke either, but they laugh with me, and _god_ , it feels so good, so different from the first day, it already feels like we’re all friends.

“Human. _You_. Name.” Sollux says, taking his time between each word, as if trying to remember the right words to say so I can understand what he means.

“Oh! You mean, my name?” and he nods, his head turned to my general direction. “It’s John! John Egbert. It’s nice to finally meet all of you.”

“ _John_.” Vriska repeats slowly, smiling softly. Sollux does the same, and I blush a little. “John good human.”

I laugh awkwardly, nodding. “Yes, I suppose I am. Thanks.”

“No thanks.” She says. “I thanks.”

Though she speaks funny, because she doesn’t know how to build the sentences correctly, I can always understand the meaning behind her words. And it makes my chest warm up with glee.

“I know I said this once already,” I state, becoming dead serious all of the sudden so they know I truly mean what I’m about to say. I hold back the tears threatening to roll down my cheeks. One escapes against my will, and Karkat turns his head to look at me at that exact moment, expression unbendable the whole time. “but I will get you out of here. All of you. Alive. And I don’t know how you’ll go back to where you belong, but hopefully we’ll figure it out when the time comes. _Together_.”

I turn directly at Karkat. And even though his expression haven’t softened, I can see the look on his eyes change slightly, and I would recognize that look anywhere.

 _Hope_.

“I **promise**.”


	4. Chapter 4

Cold.

It was cold.

Normally, I don’t mind the cold, not one fucking bit, but it was exceptionally cold.

When I opened up my eyes, I found myself staring up at a white, smooth ceiling, and the bright light coming from god knows where nearly blinded me, making a sharp, vivid pain in my forehead throb. I could faintly make out a weak sting on my side and on my left arm as well, but they hardly mattered over the headache rippling through my skull.

A person leaned over me, wearing a white cloth over their nose and mouth, and they whispered something. Their eyes were hard, bitter. Frightening.

I am not one to be afraid of petty things like soft, squishy aliens like the person leaning over me, but there was something about the position I was in and the way that person stared deep inside my eyes... it made me uneasy.

But it was too cold, and my head hurt too much, and thinking was just way too hard, so I didn’t even move.

A latex covered hand reached for my face and slipped my eyelids close, and the person whispered something unintelligible to me.

“ _Sleep_.”

And with that, I felt an even colder object touching my chest, and the pain in my head was nothing, _nothing_ compared to that hot, burning agony between my ribs that didn’t help in anyway whatsoever to ease the coldness in my body away, nothing, _nothing_ , no no no _no_ **_NO_** _!!!_

The next thing I remember is screaming my lungs out.

And then...

nothing.

Nothing but the silence and the coldcoldcold.

\---

“...Karkat?”

Despite all the coldness still surrounding me, there was a warmwarmwarm... _something_ on my shoulder. I couldn’t make out what it was behind the sleep fogging my eyes.

“Karkat, you okay?”

I understood the words, somehow. Someone was talking to me, probably expecting an answer. I slowly opened my eyes, and yes, I was still looking at that damn white ceiling, but instead of a frightening person with the white cloth over their mouth, before me was the young human boy with pitch black hair and square framed glasses over his nose. His blue eyes stared into my own, filled with concern, and I noticed that the warm something on my shoulder was his hand. He gave me an affectionate smile when I opened my eyes.

“Thank goodness, Karkat! For a second there I thought you wouldn’t wake up! Were you having a nightmare? You were shaking and muttering stuff...”

I glared at him, still a bit groggy with sleep and that damn constant tiredness I’ve been having ever since I was strapped down onto that hard metal surface (542days _andcounting_ ), and I wondered what the hell made the human think I could possibly understand what he was saying. But even if I ever understood him, I refused to interact with him; the only kind of interaction I’m interested in involves shredding his flesh to pieces like they did to Equius’.

The John human, though, didn’t seem to have been involved or have been a part of it; I know that because I can read that motherfucker like an open book. He widens his eyes when he’s shocked or scared, he goes pale (even more than he already is) when he sees blood, and he panics when he hurts any of us, even if only slightly. I still remember the way he bolted inside the room we’re in, puked his guts out inside the sink, cried his heart out and apologized over Equius’ death until his voice was ragged and his eyes were puffy and swollen. How he cleaned up the dark blue blood out of every surface of the room with a pained look, as if it physically hurt him to be a part of this.

It’s confusing and frustrating, because no other humans who ever interacted with us ever reacted that way... none of them ever cared for any of us, treated us like living things. But not only the John human is doing that, he’s somehow trying to befriend us.

Pathetic.

The cuffs in my hands and ankles prove that I’m still a monster before his eyes.

Sollux and Vriska, on the other hand, seem thrilled by this change. The human is slowly learning how to trust them both and so they are slowly learning how to trust the human back, despite all the warnings and all the orders I gave them as to not do such thing. It’s insane, it’s absurd, and yet, despite the fact that they agreed with me, they simply shrugged and said,

“What more do we have to lose, Karkat?”

And fuck.

“He might be our only chance to get out of here alive.”

As much as I fucking hate to admit it,

they’re right.

The John human treats us almost as equals, though he still does as he is told by the other humans who always come before him, the ones that poke and prod us with sharp tools and have no mercy on our bodies; the ones that laugh and sneer at our cries of mercy and our growls of pain, and who respond with punches, slaps and pinches at our vague threats to their lives. The John human dislikes them. That much is clear by the way he glares at them when they’re not looking, how he apologizes in their behalf for every new cut and incision we have in our bodies, how he sounds bitter and just a tad furious when he mentions their names.

It’s been nine days since he first came, and he’s been trying to teach us how to speak their language – English, or so he says – through books, pamphlets and sheer determination. He brings us pictures and enunciates the words for them, and he tries his best to fake sensations and feelings as to name them for us. His best is laughable though, to say the least, and he blushes and laughs awkwardly whenever we mock his hilarious attempts.

“Okay, okay, now that’s not fair!” he says, his face turning a vivid tone of red. “I think that was a really good demonstration for nausea, come on!”

I never laugh as hard or as sincerely as Vriska and Sollux, but I grin and chuckle under my breath, and John always smiles widely at that.

But I don’t want to trust the human, no matter how good to us he may be. Never.

Because one day, if he has to choose, he’ll choose his own life over ours; that’s just how the human nature works.

And frankly, it’s only logical.

I always fall asleep trying not to think about his laugh or smile or his soothing voice.

I drift off to sleep without even noticing that I’ve failed.

\---

You’re standing before your small, but loyal crew. “Now pay attention.” you say, and everyone straightens their backs. “Because what I am about to say is very important.”

But you don’t know what you were about to say, because in the next moment, the ship you’re all in crashes into Earth’s atmosphere, and the whole place shakes violently. You rush to your command station, and so does everyone else. Sollux takes his place next to you, and you two try to steer the ship so it won’t hit the ground too hard.

Though it is definitely not the best landing you’ve ever done, you two manage to land the ship without inflicting too much harm to it. You and Equius inspect the damage: just a deep dent in the hull and a broken engine; nothing that can’t be fixed within a few weeks, but you won’t be able to begin your raid without fixing those things first.

Well. Patience is a virtue, as you always say.

A few days later, the damage proves itself a lot more difficult than you first believed. There’s a huge dent on the bottom of the ship, and without lifting or moving the ship to reach it, it’s unfixable. The deep dent forms a crack after two days, unable to stand the heavy weight of the ship, and said crack becomes wider and wider with each passing hour, threatening to leak all the gas you have left if it gets wider still.

You curse out loud; this was not in your plans.

You try to figure out a solution while Sollux attempts to hold back the crack. It’s a bit ineffective, but it gives you all a few extra days.

That’s all you need, you tell yourself. A few extra days.

And then you’ll all be calling this planet your own.

\---

I open my eyes again, flinching because of the light on top of me. It warms up my skin to the point of nearly unbearable, but after almost one sweep of enduring it, I’ve learned not to complain and just take it like a grown troll. The cut they’ve made on my abdomen is now healed enough for them to remove the stitches, so that’s exactly what they’re doing. They do it without the slightest finesse though, and I wince when I feel the thick, rough thread run beneath my skin as they pull it off of me.

I let out a deep breath of pain when they’re done. They shut off the light and push the lamp away, and the cocky guy with red hair laughs at me with gusto.

“Look at you. You’re so pathetic.” He says as he snaps his gloves off. He throws one of them on my face, and when I try to breathe in again, the thin material gets caught in my nostrils, making it nigh impossible to inhale. I try shaking my head to pry it off... but John is not here, which means that my head is securely held down, so I try to blow it off instead. But I obviously don’t have enough strength in my lungs to push it away from my face, especially after the “kind” treatment they offered me just now, so I give up, settling with breathing through my slightly open mouth, sucking the air from between my teeth. I can feel the taste of rubber and my own blood on my tongue every time I breathe in.

“Kilee, that’s enough. You don’t want the thing to suffocate, do you?” the female human asks, and Kilee scoffs, but takes the glove off my face anyway.

“And also, little Johnny boy will be here any minute now, and he might think it’s _cruel_ what I’m doing to it!”

Kilee laughs out loud, and so does Claire.

“Maybe he’ll let the alien out of his restraints again to have them _kill you_.” the girl says, and they both laugh again, only slightly louder.

I don’t fully understand what they’re saying, but I have a small notion, and it’s stupid.

If only they knew how badly I could actually hurt them…

If only they knew how badly I _will_ actually hurt them...

They’d never use their tongues ever again.

John comes in later, after the trio has already left. It’s been ten days since he first came along. The stupid human is as cheerful as always as he teaches us all a few more words. He’s been increasing the quantity of words per day once he’s realized how fast we learn, and he’s honest to god excited about having almost regular conversations with us. We can see that he wants to release us really badly, but he’s still afraid.

Too many teeth and too sharp claws, he says, laughing nervously afterwards.

None of us blame him for thinking like that.

\---

Equius steps up to you, and shakes you awake as gently as possible. You open your eyes slowly, and he’s sweating, his face twisted in a nervous frown.

“What’s wrong?”

“We’ve been running low on food, leader.” He says, wiping his forehead with a towel. “Whatever shall we do?”

You stop to think, worried, and look out the window.

That human hive’s been bothering you ever since you landed on its lawnring.

“Call the others for an emergency meeting.” You say, straightening your back. “We’re raiding tomorrow.”

\---

I open my eyes to the bright ceiling of the lab, deciding that I’ve been having too many dreams as of lately.

I should really consider avoid falling asleep.

I look beside me, and John is wiping the healed wound on my stomach, commenting on how amazing it is that I can heal so damn fast. I snort, because seriously, it’s not me who heals fast, it’s them who don’t heal fast enough.

It’s the eleventh day since the John human began taking care of us, and it’s blatantly obvious that he spends more and more time with us with each passing day. I still refuse to talk to him, though. Brain-dead, moronic asshole. We really shouldn’t trust him, but Vriska and Sollux had been dying to have some almost regular interaction with, well, _anything_. They appreciate the fact that they can sit up now, that they can stretch and move properly after so many days and weeks and months, and more and more it seems like the human is willing to just go for it and let us all go completely.

“We just need a plan.” He says, and Vriska and Sollux nod. “I can’t just let you all go and run and hope for the best, they’d just capture you again. We need to think of a plan to get out of here unnoticed.”

Ah, right. He’s worried that if he lets us go, we’ll push past him and run for it. Little does he know that we’ve tried that one before, and needless to say, it didn’t work. It’s a valid concern though, so I keep quiet as usual.

“We tried escape.” Vriska says, as if reading my thoughts.

“ _Escaping_.”

“We tried escaping.” She repeats, and _fuck_ , it’s sickening how they do that every single time he corrects their English. “They capture us.”

“Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean! We need to think of a good plan that allows us to avoid other people on our way out. So that the four of us can get out of here safe and sound.”

“Four?” Sollux asks, and the John human looks at him with a crooked smile.

“Yeah, well, it’s not like I’ll be able to come back after this, you know…”

After that, there’s silence. It just hit us now that the human is literally sacrificing himself to do this for us. It’s only when John turns to look at me that I realize I’m staring.

“Why?” I ask him, squinting my eyes a bit, and he laughs awkwardly.

“Well, I can’t just leave you guys here!”

“Why not?”

And he stares back, as if what I’m saying is completely nonsense.

“Because they’ll kill you.”

“So? Why you care?”

He stops, realizing what I mean, and says very seriously, not a hint of a smile on his lips.

“How could I not care? Knowing that you are suffering… I at least have to try to do something to help you out. I’d never be able to live with myself if I didn’t at least try.”

And that’s when I’m absolutely sure the human has a loose screw somewhere up in his thinkpan.

The subject of why he’s so benevolent is dropped quickly; instead, John eventually tries to ask Vriska why she and Sollux need blindfolds. Vriska smiles maliciously.

“I show you.”

John hesitates. He looks at her and fidgets with the hem of his shirt.

“I-I’m not sure if--“

“John.” she says, and when he raises his head, she nods once. “Trust Vriska.”

He stops, turns around and looks at me, and then back at Vriska again; he’s sweating and shaking visibly.

“O-okay. I... I trust you.”

I snort, but John doesn’t hear it.

What a jackass.

He steps closer to Vriska, _fucking fool_ , goes behind her and opens the thing, sliding it off her face. Her eyes are shut tightly, and she opens them slowly, trying to get used to the bright light of the lab. John turns around and stands before her.

“H-how are you feeling?”

“Gr8!!!!!!!!” She says, opening her eyes widely, and her eight-fold vision shines bright red when she locks her gaze with John’s. I sigh, and Sollux smirks.

“Thith ith going to be interethting.” He says in Alternian, turning towards me as to indicate he’s acknowledging my presence. I huff.

“Whatever. I just hope she leaves me a piece to shred, too.”

Sollux laughs and waves his head.

“Boy, you can’t honethtly think thhe’s going to kill him.”

I lift a single brow.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Karkat, you’re the romanthe expert! Vrithka ith getting _tho_ red for the human, how can you not thee that??”

I widen my eyes, and my heart seems to stop for a second. I turn to look at the John human and Vriska, and he is paralyzed before her, unable to move. Vriska is surely fucking up with his head already, but I never thought that she...

The first thing that comes to my mind is Stockholm syndrome. It _has_ to be.

“W-w-w-what’s happening??” he asks, voice trembling with shock and fear.

“I show John me eyes. I control John mind.”

His skin gets pale as the walls of the room as he understands her words. For a second, I don’t know for sure if he’s appalled, terrified or amazed, or the three things at the same time, but suddenly he starts moving. He ducks under the table, finds the binders holding Virska’s right hand down, unclips it; he crawls toward her left, and does exactly the same. A bit more moving around and he’s released her ankles. John rises at the same time Vriska is sitting upright on the metal table. He looks downright petrified as he watches her stretch and twist her body around. She stands on her feet at the same time the puny human drops to his knees and kisses her feet. Sollux starts cackling, but I don’t find it in the least funny. She bends down a little, extends her index finger, touches the underside of the human’s chin with the tip of her yellow nail, and he rises at the same speed she commands him to. She’s a few inches taller than him, you notice, a lot more if you were to count her horns; her hair has become so long it covers up her naked behind, and she folds her left arm behind her back, over her black locks, and fuck fuck _fuck_ she’s leaning in towards John. He doesn’t say a thing, and his face is completely impassive, no longer twisted with fear and shock. I’m pretty sure that Vriska is making him keep that façade.

Her right hand rises slowly and she bends all five fingers forward, the tip of her fingers – and, consequently, her sharp nails – pointing to John’s face. She approaches him, scraping her yellow nails along his cheekbone so lightly it doesn’t even leave a mark on his pale skin. She keeps tracing her hand down, down, down, scraping her nails on his neck, lingering a while longer over a big, pulsing vein. They slide further down to his collarbone, then to the front of his shirt, and she finally stills her hand where his heart is, pressing all five nails down over that soft space between his ribcages, as if she was about to, in one motion, sink her claws into him and rip out the beating organ from within his body. Another bead of sweat runs down his face and lingers on his chin, and Vriska smiles wickedly.

“Thank you.”

And with that, she relaxes her fingers, presses the flat of her palm over his chest, grabs the fabric of his clothing with that same hand and pulls him forward, sealing his lips with her own.

My mouth slacks open.

She’s definitely still controlling his mind, _she has to be_ , because the human closes his eyes, relaxes, and starts kissing her back, what the fuck, _what the fuck_! It’s disgusting, it’s like watching a troll kissing a drone, and she opens her mouth, what the _fuck_ , and he does too, _oh my god_ what the ever living fuck, and he wraps one arm around her bony back, tangling his other hand on the hair on the back of her head, coaxing her closer, closer, and she pulls him towards her by his hips, and Sollux is laughing, laughing, what the fuck _what the fuck_ _what the **fuck**_!!!!

“KK, you have to describe me what’th going on, I can only hear and thmell what they’re doing, _fuck_ , thith ith tho not fair!”

But I ignore him. I ignore him because why would anyone ever want to see that.

It’s disgusting, it’s revolting, it’s—

_Eeeuuugh._

After what seems like a whole perigree later, Vriska finally lets John go by pushing him away with the fisted hand that was still holding his shirt, and he falls flat on his back to the floor, arms splayed out, staring at the ceiling.

Vriska’s mind control must be wearing off, because his once pale skin becomes redder by the second, but he makes no attempts at moving whatsoever.

“Well?” she says in English, placing a hand over her hip. John opens his mouth to talk, but all that comes out of his throat is a squeaky cry. She laughs and turns around, walking towards Sollux’s table and removing his blindfold. He sighs contently.

“Finally!” he tells her. “Took you long enough!”

“Sorry, technoboy.” She says in a mocking tone before hiding under his table to release him too. Sollux raises his arms the very moment he’s free, smiling widely, and Vriska moves to his ankles. And despite my efforts to be mad at them, I grin. He looks too damn happy. “I was too busy getting it on with the naïve looking human, just in case you didn’t notice.”

“Yeah, whatever.” He says, and when Vriska makes her way to my table to release me from my restrains, Sollux walks towards the human. John widens his eyes, his mouth slacks open and his brows get lost in the tangle of his hair. Sollux grins.

“Hey, you.”

And with that, there’s a blue and red light cracking and sparkling in the air, and next thing I know, the human’s floating above his head, squirming and yelping.

“P-p-p-put me down! P-please, put me down, oh my god!”

“Put him down, you idiot!” I growl in Alternian, rubbing the still sore scar on my stomach. “You want his girly shouts to warn someone about the little party going on here?!”

Sollux shrugs, still smiling, and slowly puts John on the floor on his feet. His legs wobble, and he holds himself on Virska’s empty table for support.

“I wath jutht practicing. It’th been almost a thweep thinthe the last time I uthed my powerth.”

“And it’s been almost a sweep since the last time I used my bulge, but you don’t see me flapping it around like a useless idiot, do you?!”

Vriska cackles, and John turns to the three of us just as I’m standing up, twisting my ankles.

“Oh my god.”

He raises a hand to his red lips, trembling.

“Oh my god, what... what did you do to me?"

Vriska grins maliciously.

“You like it?”

“I... no! N-no, you, you forced me, I... I kissed you! Oh my god, I kissed you! I think your fangs cut my tongue too, _ow_.” He sticks his tongue out and touches it with his finger, examining the blood on it. “Ow. Okay. Okay, so I guess t-that’s why you were blindfolded. Cool. Uh. Please don’t do that to me again?”

She chuckles and nods. “Okay.”

“Okay. _Okay_. And you…” he turns to Sollux, and he crosses his arms. “Your... _eyes_... they don’t have pupils, holy shit, it’s... _scary_. And amazing. You made me _float_ , I was freaking flying over there, how’d... oh my god. Oh wow, this... this is actually incredible.”

John starts laughing, still gently touching his tongue with his fingers, now smeared with red all over. He looks at me and asks, “And what can Karkat do?”

I blush, my ears drooping, and Vriska and Sollux laugh at me. “Fuck you!!” I yell, and John flinches.

“Karkat is _leader_.” Vriska says. “But he not do special things.”

“ _Oh!_ ” John nods, smiling again. “Oh, I see. I see, huh, interesting. I always knew you were pretty important, Karkat.” He says, smiling again, and I blush even harder at that, I mean, what the heck is that supposed to mean. Instead of humiliating myself at trying to ask him that, I turn my back to him and walk towards the sink. I open the tap the same way I’ve seen John do so many times before, and I duck my head beneath the water flow, gulping down the cold water, and _fuck_ , my throat feels sore as shit from all the time it was left unused. Swallowing feels weird now, because at the same time it hurts, it feels good as hell. Before I know it, Vriska and Sollux are behind me, waiting for their turn at the fresh water, and when I step away from the sink, John offers me a clean white coat like the ones the other humans wear.

“So you can cover yourself.” He says, holding the thing by the shoulders, and despite the fact that I hate that garment so much I can barely stand looking at it, the lab is pretty cold, and I can’t help but feel a bit embarrassed about my current state now that we’re all standing up. I turn around in an unspoken invitation, and John takes the hint, placing the fabric over my shoulders. My arms slide easily into the sleeves – if I was fit like before, the muscles in my arms would’ve made the task of putting it on a lot harder – while John faces me to button it up. I push his hand away, annoyed, grumbling “I am not a goddamn grub, fuckass” without even realizing I had said it all in Alternian. John merely nods and walks away, probably respecting my wish to keep the little remains of dignity that I have left. He offers a second coat and a dry towel to Vriska and she thanks him in English. Sollux helps himself with the third coat over the counter, taking the towel from Vriska’s hand after she finishes wiping her wet face.

Dressed and decent, the four of us sit down on the floor, back leaning against the wall, and... well, I have to admit that this is nice. John says that now is a better time than any to start figuring a plan out, and we all agree, even though I’m a lot more reluctant than the others.

“I no like John.” I say.

“Don’t. _Don’t_ like”, John corrects me, and I growl back at him.

“ _Fuck you_.”

“Well, those two words you learned pretty fast!” he says, giggling. “But seriously, Karkat, I know you don’t like me, and I don’t blame you – but you don’t have to like me to work with me. And we all need to work together to escape this place. We can’t do it without you, and I can’t think of a good plan without your help. _You’re_ the leader after all. Not me.”

I stared at him then, unsure of what to say. I only understood half the words he spoke, but it was enough to know what he had meant. He looked at me, expectant, waiting for my reply, and so did Sollux and Vriska. They had that pleading look on their eyes, and something told me that it was because they would never go on with any plan whatsoever if I wasn’t fully on board with it.

I sighed; what else was there to do?

“Fine.”

And even though it was in my mother language, John smiled sweetly at me, as if understanding my words.

I fought against the blush spreading through my face.

And by the sly look on Sollux’s face, I lost said battle.

\---

You took another step towards the top of these white stairs, risking a glance behind, to the hallway where you came from.

Nothing.

You couldn’t even feel the comfort of the darkness, because there were light bulbs all around the place, making everything way too bright and way too white. Fuck humans and their fondness for that dammed color.

When you turned to keep on walking forward, your eyes were instantly glued to a light bulb beside you, and you growled with annoyance, blinded for a second. In a fit of rage against the offending object, you stroke a blow to it with one of your sickles. There was the sound of shattering glass and a fuse going off, and then there was no more light before your eyes.

You smiled triumphantly, looked up, and decided to do the exact same thing to all the remaining bulbs before you.

One by one, they fell. One by one they were shattered, lit off, broken to pieces. And as you got rid of each and every one of them, you felt a familiar glee warming up in your chest, of destroying something that has been bothering you. Of getting rid of an annoyance.

You imagine doing the same thing to a five foot tall drone as your hand swiftly goes down and slices through another bulb. You smile and chuckle wickedly as the you in your mind succeeds, culls the drone with a swift blow against its chest, and the drone falls to the floor before your feet, bleeding black. You whip around, destroy another bulb, and with a triumphant howl, you notice that you have successfully made your way to the top of the stairs. The steps leading to the hallway are now pitch dark with the absence of any light source, but you can see perfectly fine. For a few blissful seconds you completely forget why you are here, and it’s all it takes. You swing the door behind you open, forgetting to check for any signs of life on the other side beforehand.

You regret this decision to this day.

A hoard of humans lunge towards you the moment the door is open. You stumble backwards, startled, and a false step makes you trip and tumble downstairs. When you finally come to a stop, the fastest human – just another way of saying “the jackass who reached you first” – jumps down the remaining steps, lands on his feet, falls to his knees for balance, and points a gun at you, but you’re already moving before he can do anything. The shot that came from the barrel hits the floor where your torso was half a second seconds earlier, and before the puny human can fully realize what just happened, you’re behind him, hooking both sickles to his neck and pulling back.

Blood gushed out of the wound, hot and warm beneath your clenched fingers, but you paid the man or his blood no mind. You were already darting towards the end of the hallway, to the door where you came from, before the gun fell from his now limp hands. You could hear the faint thud of his head as it rolled to the floor, and somewhere behind him, the humans shouting with horror and grief. You shatter light bulbs along your way, hoping that the darkness gets in their way, but that means you’re running slower. Consequently, already another human is beside you, pointing the very same weapon at your general direction. You step out of the way before the bullet is released, but that means you have stopped running altogether, and suddenly, another three men are beside the second one. From somewhere up the stairs, more humans begin shooting, trying to hit you, and you curse loudly.

You strike the man beside you with your sickles, and they retreat; it’s a long enough hesitation, and you begin running down the hall once again, still shattering light bulbs along the way. The darkness follows you as you make your way back to the single door, and behind you, you can hear explosion after explosion coming from the weapons the humans carry. One bullet scrapes your arm and you wince, watching from the corner of your eye as hot, red blood pours out from the shallow wound. You ignore the pain, flinging your sickle one last time, rendering the hallway completely dark, and you reach for the handle before you, so close, you’re almost there, and you turn the metal, and your arms ache, and fuck, fuck, _fu…!_

Oooh, no.

You turn the knob again.

The door is locked.

Behind you, the humans are shouting, running towards you. Another bullet scrapes your side, and you yell, holding tightly to your sickles. You turn around; there’s a least a dozen of them. They can barely see you, but you can see them. And you know that you won’t be able to fight against firearms.

“Backup, backup, I need backup!” you shout into your communicator, but the line that speaks through all four devices is static. You try Equius’ only. “ _Backup, backup_ , I’m in deep shit, I need assistance, and fast!!”

Static.

“Equius!! Where are you?!?!!”

More static.

**_Fuck._ **

The humans are almost reaching you. You can’t wait anymore. You rush forward, breathing solemnly through your nostrils, and hit the first one on the stomach. The pointy end of the sickle gets caught in his abdomen, and you throw him forward, dropping two other men with the dead weight of his body. You spin around with no mercy, hitting anything that comes your way, and after at least seven other humans have already dropped at your feet, the tip of your sickle gets stuck on someone behind you. You yank the weapon off of them, and when you glance at your blade, you realize… you notice how _red_ it is.

Your eyes widen as you stare at the piece of meat stuck in your blade, because it’s redredred like your blood red like your blood red like your blood fuckfuck _fuck **fuuuuck**_!!

You’re shocked, embarrassed, afraid, and most of all, confused.

Those three seconds you spend contemplating the chunk of flesh on the tip of your sickle is all it takes.

A man standing before you hits you in the horn with the flat of his gun, and even though it’s dark, you can’t see anything anymore.

\---

I open my eyes, slowly. From the corner of my eye, I can see John talking to the other three humans; they’re already leaving. I try lifting my hand to feel my healing wound – it should probably be all better by now –, but for some reason, it’s heavier than usual; I look down, and what the fuck, why is it – _ah_.

I almost forgot I allowed the human to put us back to the table.

All part of the plan, we all said. I grunt, annoyed. It’s hard to get a taste of freedom only to have it taken away so soon.

It’s the twelfth day since we all met John for the first time. The black haired human turns around when I drop my hand back to the table and smiles at me. He approaches me and begins undoing the metal clips by my hands.

“Hey.” He says, and when both my hands are free, I rub my wrists, feeling the bones popping beneath my fingers. “How are you feeling?”

When I don’t give him a proper answer, he sighs, stepping away from me and releasing Vriska first. He removes her blindfold, and the first thing I notice is the look in her eyes. Sollux has the same look, though a bit less intense than hers, but John doesn’t seem to notice. He probably assumes they’re just tired, because he is, too. He offers the lab coats to the three of us, and soon we’re all sitting on the floor again, leaning against the wall. John lies down and stares at the ceiling as we discuss finer details of the plan. He sometimes glances at us, corrects a few words here and there, tries his best to explain terms we don’t understand. He mentions being able to take Sollux to a place with computers, so they can deactivate the surveillance cameras. His eyes shine with excitement.

“I’ll also bring you guys some decent outfits; these lab coats are not as warm. I think we can put the plan into action next week, or something.” He says, yawning. Vriska looks down at her knees, and I can help but feel that I missed something important while sleeping.

The human’s breathing becomes shallow and steady after he closes his eyes, and the three of us enjoy the comfortable silence. Sollux takes the cue and lays down on his side on the floor, curling up a bit.

“Thomeone hath to wake John up in a bit.” He says, his lisp heavy and dragged. “Don’t want the thame dithathter of lath time happening again, now, do we?” I flinch and glare at him, but he’s already dozing off. I look at Vriska, who seems to be utterly tired as well, but even more than usual. Her look worries me, but she gives me a half smile and nods once.

“Go to sleep.” She says. “I’ll make sure to wake John up.”

I nod back, and decide to not ask her about what’s wrong. If she wanted me to know, she would’ve told me. Besides, I have a feeling I’ll find out soon enough.

In merely five minutes of lying with my chest and stomach pressed against the cold floor, I drift off to sleep yet again.

\---

When I open my eyes again, half asleep, John is still splayed down on the floor, staring up at Vriska from between his half open eyelids. She’s leaning down towards him, kneeled behind his head, and her left eye glows red for a moment before becoming a dull maroon back again; she straightens her back, but doesn’t look away from him.

“What… did you do to me… this time?” John asks, mumbling. She chuckles sadly.

“Luck.”

Though she spoke in English, I know he doesn’t get her answer because of the way he furrows his brows, confused. She reaches forwards and touches his eyelids gently with the tip of her fingers, mindful of her claws, and closes them; the human boy falls back asleep almost instantly. She stares down at him for a few minutes in completely silence, then turns to look at me, smile long gone from her lips.

“You’ll need all the luck you can have.” She whispers in Alternian, a single tear sliding down her cheek from her normal eye, but before I can ask her anything, her eyes glow red again and I find myself drifting off to sleep as well.

I wake up a few hours later, already strapped down to my table. John is apparently long gone, and the humans in charge of torturing us are sliding the needle of the syringe with the nutrients we need to stay alive on the back of my hand, pushing the liquid with more force than strictly needed into my bloodstream. It makes me dizzy, nauseous, and it hurts like a bitch, but I don’t even flinch, don’t even open my eyes.

Tonight will be the 13th night John visits us.

For some reason, I can’t shake off the nagging feeling that something terrible is about to happen to us.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW LOOK WHO'S ALIVE
> 
> (that tw in the tags list will look relevant in a minute; you've been warned)
> 
>  
> 
> \--

Vriska wakes me up at five in the morning. She must’ve put my head on her lap while I was asleep, because I really can’t remember using her bony knees as a pillow. Honestly, I can’t help but think to myself that the floor is actually a bit more comfortable than her.

“It’s time already, huh.” I whisper, yawning and stretching. Vriska smiles and keeps scratching my scalp with her pointy nails. It’s a really good sensation, and I allow myself a few extra lazy minutes on her arms.

“Yes. Time.” She says, stilling her hand over my head. I take that moment to sit up straight and look around. Karkat and Sollux are still sleeping sound, lying on their sides, curled up in balls. I smile and reach for Karkat at the same time Vriska reaches for Sollux.

“Hey, buddy. Wake up, it’s time.” I whisper, shaking him slightly by his shoulders, and his eyes slowly crack open, his golden sclera glowing in the dimness of the room. “They’re gonna be here soon, I gotta fix you up on the table. Wanna have some water first?”

“Hnnhgfnnng.” He mumbles, and I chuckle, rising to my feet. Walking to the sink, I fill a glass with water, drink it all in one go, then fill it up again. I take two extra glasses and fill them too, turning around and offering each one to Sollux and Vriska. They’re both kneeling on the floor, and they certainly don’t look happy, but they still accept the water I’m offering them.

“Is everything alright?” I ask, mentally punching myself for such an asinine question, because _duh_ , of course things aren’t fine, they’re going to live through one more day of this hellhole, why would things be fine? But they don’t seem to notice, because Vriska responds by shaking her head, black hair flowing beautifully in the dark.

“No. Everything fine.” She says, rising to her feet and handing me the empty glass.

I don’t believe her words. Not even for a second.

Sollux’s glass appear beside me, in the air, floating beside my head. I giggle, take it before it’s dropped, and instantly it stills and Sollux’s psionic powers fade away. He walks to his table alongside with Vris as I take their glasses to the sink, reaching for Karkat’s, and I kneel beside him on the floor. He’s still curled up like a baby, hiding his head on his arms and knees.

It’s absolutely adorable.

“Hey. Here, have some water, will ya?” I whisper, nudging his arm with the cold glass. He groans, shifts, and then peeks at the water I’m offering him. He considers it for a few seconds before taking it from my hands and drinking it up, licking his lips and fangs afterwards.

“Alright, now back to bed. You can sleep more after I’m gone, okay?”

“ _Bed_.” He repeats, and I can clearly sense the mocking and serious tone on his voice. He knows what a bed is – I’ve shown them a picture – and he knows that the cold, hard table is nothing like it.

In ten minutes, all three trolls are securely strapped down, and it’s like they didn’t even leave the tables in the first place. I flicker off the lights and wish them a good night.

Little did I know what I was expecting.

The next day, I’m talking to my supervisor as he explains to me the step-by-step of a new task I’ll be executing on the base, when Joshua approaches me. I widen my eyes and my supervisor nods once.

“Mister Josh”, he says, and it’s hella weird, because he’s at least twenty years older than Joshua. Still, the dude nods back and smiles, saying hello back.

“I’m afraid I’m gonna have to borrow John for the rest of the day, James.” He says, and the older man looks at me for a second, as if evaluating me. “It’s regarding his night shift. Do you mind?”

Somehow it feels like even if he did mind he wouldn’t have much of a choice.

“Please, go right ahead. John, we’ll keep discussing this first thing tomorrow.”

“Yessir!” I exclaim, and Joshua is already walking away. “I, uh, guess I’ll see you tomorrow!”

By the time I catch up with him, I’m running a cold sweat. What if they found out about my night activities? What if he’s pissed and he’s going to, I don’t know, _execute_ me? What if…

“I have great news, Johnathan!” he exclaims, looking back at me and smiling. _Whew_. It’s like a huge weight was taken off my chest.

“Y-yeah?” I stutter, because great news with them can never _really_ mean great news.

“Yes! The new anesthetic is ready for testing! And this time I’m pretty sure it works! Pretty cool, huh?”

My blood freezes. I remember Vriska’s and Sollux’s faces from yesterday.

“O-oh?” I curse myself for my hesitation, but try my best to sound interested. “So... you’re operating the tro-aliens again? Like when you did it to that other one?”

“Yup. We sure are.” And we’re both reaching the elevator that leads to the underground facilities, and when the metal doors close, he turns to face me. “And you’ll be there, helping us out.”

I widen my eyes.

“W-w-w-what?!?!”

He looks serious all of the sudden, and my heart stops beating. “I know you said that you didn’t want to be a part of this, so consider this your punishment for opening their metal binds last week. You need this shock treatment, John. Maybe if you take a close look at them, you’ll finally realize that they’re _monsters_ , and not friendly creatures being wronged. Because they’re not.”

I fight back the tears threatening to spill over my eyes. The place where Vriska scratched my scalp this morning itches. The glass that Sollux handed me with his powers burns in my mind. The half-hearted mumble Karkat gave me when I nudged him with my sneaker. The kiss...

I shudder.

The kiss that Vriska gave me was hot, languid and rough, and it was my very first kiss. Even if it was against my very own will, I still remember the kiss.

It had passion, emotion, _feelings_.

And they still...

...oh, god.

**_“What did you do to me this time?”_ **

**_“Luck.”_ **

Oh, no.

“Who... who will you be operating?”

Joshua smiles.

My stomach churns uncomfortably.

“The female one.”

 

\---

 

Before we even enter the lab, I can hear the shrilling. We both look at each other, and without another word, Joshua dashes to the lab. I follow him close by, and when the door opens, my ears ache with the intensity with which Vriska is shouting. The table is shaking, jumping on the floor with the force which she uses to rattle it with her body, and both Claire and Kilee try holding her down, with little to no avail. They look at Joshua with desperate looks on their faces.

“Get the syringe!” Claire yells, AND Joshua widens his eyes.

“What-- _now_?!”

“Yes now! Hurry!!”

Vriska’s shrieks become even louder, and the table shakes even harder than before. For a second it occurs to me that the increase of strength on her body might be my fault, what with all the water and food and exercises they’ve been having lately, but I can’t find it in me to feel bad about it. Joshua comes back, fixes the liquid inside a syringe, but is unable to approach the table. It’s like there’s an earthquake on the room, given how bad and how roughly she’s shaking and stirring and screaming.

Somehow, I know I have to go help them out, but it’s like I can’t move. My feet seem to be glued to the floor and my legs are as stiff as metal bars. And anyway, even if I could, I would never be able to hold her down while he inserted the pinkish liquid inside her vein, not with my arms shivering violently as they are. I feel like I can barely breath, my heart beating a hundred miles an hour, and when I unlock my gaze from her face and look up at Joshua, I notice how he is still holding the syringe, frowning and looking worriedly down at Vriska.

Wondering how the hell he’s going to do this.

“ _Move!!_ ” He suddenly yells, and the hard, business-like voice is so unlike him, so unlike the young, cheerful man I know it makes me flinch. Immediately Claire and Kilee step away, and Joshua kicks Vriska’s table; it goes flying across the room ‘till it hits the opposite wall with a loud _clang_. Vriska’s long horns were the first to take the impact, leaving deep dents on the wall where they hit, and she shouts even louder than before, the pain and agony visible in her voice. The shock and ache of the crash makes her momentarily still her body, and Joshua stapes forward rapidly, taking that instant of hesitance on her part to hold her arm down and sink the needle into it.

Three seconds later, the needle is empty, Vriska finally she stops shouting. From behind her blindfolds a pastel blue liquid runs down her cheeks, and she keeps her mouth open as she breathes in and out, in and out, her naked breasts rising and falling rapidly. Her fangs glisten with her saliva, and slowly, slowly, her body begins shutting down, and just as she’s about to lose consciousness, she bares her fangs and gums, and whispers.

“...Jo...hn...”

My chest clenches painfully.

Vriska’s out.

Sollux roars. His normally blank and uninterested look becomes one of pure fury, and he shrieks and thrashes in his table. All three look over at him in awe and worry. Not me, though. I can’t keep my eyes away from Vriska.

 _God damn it!_ Someone shouts beside me, and it’s hard to tell who it was, because my world has suddenly stopped working, the gears aren’t turning, the air just doesn’t even flow anymore. Vriska’s just sleeping, numb and trapped and helpless, but it’s as if she’s already dead.

Joshua’s appearance right beside Vriska’s table effectively wakes me up from my stupor. He glares at me and fumbles with her blindfold.

“How’d she know your name?” he asks me, a sharp undertone to his voice. I stutter, babbling incoherent words, and he frowns, serious. “Johnathan!”

“I, uh... maybe she heard us saying it and learned it? I really don’t know!!” I exclaim, a little desperate, face pale and body rigid. He uncovers Vriska’s eyes, which are closed and damp with blue tears, the bags beneath them dark and sulked on her skin. I gulp as Joshua stands behind her table.

“Alright, fine; I believe you. Claire, Kilee, leave him! _”_ Joshua calls out, voice barely audible over the sound of Sollux’s screeches, and they immediately let go of the psionic to look at him. “Open the door for me and go wash yourselves for the surgery. I’ll wait for the three of you on room nine.”

 

\---

 

Everything’s a blur.

The room we’re all in is cold as fuck and smells too much like a hospital room. The latex gloves I’m wearing cling tightly and uncomfortably to my hands and the mask over my mouth and nose has a stale taste and smell. The noises and sounds around me seem to be muffled by a tick cloud of... _something_. Nervousness, maybe. Tenseness.

Fright.

(only on my part, of course. they’ve all done this before, and they don’t seem too hesitant on doing it again.)

Joshua is right next to me, eyes completely focused on Vriska. Claire is the one who is going to perform the surgery, and he’s assisting her by doing whatever the fuck she can’t do with two hands alone.

I watch, horrified, as the silver scalp digs onto Vriska’s chest, making blue blood sprout from the incision, and mercilessly she drags the sharp tool downwards, creating a deep blue line all the way down where her navel should be.

Blue blood keeps spilling and gushing and running down her torso.

I turn my head around, nauseous.

“John, are you alright?” Joshua whispers, almost kindly, and that alone makes me feel like puking even more than before.

“I... c-cant.” I stutter, fists shaking and body weak. It takes all my might to control my body so it won’t crumble down uselessly to the floor. “I can’t d-d-do this, mister Jos-shua. I d-don’t f-f-feel so g-g-good.”

The man sighs exasperatedly, and waves a bloody hand towards the back wall. “Well, okay. Go sit over there then; I don’t wanna risk you being sick or passing out on top of her.”

I gulp, walking with wobbly legs towards the single metal chair in the room. The seat is cold and makes several shivers run up my spine. I’m more than uncomfortable. More than distressed. My gaze is fixated on the floor and the floor only, and the sounds of people talking and tools being placed over metal surfaces, despite fuzzy, reach my ears and fill me with worry.

“ _Fascinating._ ”

“Is this her heart?”

“I think these are supposed to be her lungs, _wow_.”

 “Look at the bone structure, freaking amazing.”

I try blocking out the sounds, try thinking about something else. My dad, Dave, Rose, Jade, college... the trolls in the other room, still stranded, fighting for their lives...

...crying.

A single tear slips down my cheek, and a few seconds later, the curious and awestruck whispers cease, giving way to something infinitely worse.

“ _Oh my god!_ ”

I raise my head, finally looking towards the table. Both Claire and Joshua are struggling, blood spilling nonstop, Vriska’s body convulsing violently over the table.

“Nonononononononono shit _shit_ **_shit_** _quickly, get the forceps!!!_ ”

“Press it down, press it down!”

“Harder, _shit_ , we’re losing her!!”

It all happened in around five seconds (probably the longest five seconds of my entire life), until, finally, Vriska went completely limp.

“ _OHSHITFUCK GET THE DEFIBRILLATOR **HURRY GO GO GO!!!**_ ”

Kilee flees, going to a closet and pushing a large machine on wheels towards the table, and in that brief moment of free view, I see her.

Her eyes are glassy, unfocused, mouth hanging open, her long fangs peeking out from behind her lips.

The blood stopped dripping down the table with as much intensity, and her gray skin paled and seemed to go dry and cracked. I took a shuddering breath, holding back the bile rising on my throat.

Vriska is dead.

In a second, Kilee’s back, handing Joshua the defibrillator to electrocute Vriska’s heart back into function, but there’s no way that’s going to work. Though I didn’t take a close look, the sick bastards seemed to have pried open her ribcage, pushing muscles and nerves and skin away to reveal her internal organs and skeleton.

It’s like they were playing a game of doctor, not caring if the specimen would eventually die because of their lack of knowledge about their internal system.

I double over myself, placing my forehead on the back of my hands, which rest over my knees, and sob, grieving for Vriska. After a few unsuccessful tries with the defibrillator, there’s a hard kick on the metal table, another string of curses, and silence as everyone in the room breathes heavily and pace around, frustrated and mildly irritated. My hiccups are the only noise that can be made out inside the room.

After a couple of minutes, my sobbing already subdued, there’s the sound of heavy footsteps approaching my chair, stopping only when the person is just a little too close for comfort.

“Look, John.” Joshua sighs, and I try to curl up even further into myself, avoiding looking at him in the eyes. “You’ve been here for, what, two weeks? And you’re already this attached. That’s not good, kid.“ and when you don’t respond, he kneels before you. You glance at him and notice how tired and apologetic he looks.

“Don’t waste your tears with those things. They don’t deserve it. I know you’re better than this, okay?”

And he reaches forward, ruffling my hair with an already gloveless hand, as if I’m ten and he’s a worried uncle. It takes all I have not to glare at him.

“Go get some rest, okay? We all have a heapton of work ahead of us tomorrow.”

And with that, he straightens his back and walks out, leaving blue footprints behind him as he goes, Claire and Kilee following him close by.

And I know what I have to do.

I get to my feet and fetch a white blanket from a shelf. Trying my hardest not to look directly at the mess they managed to make on Vriska’s body, I throw it over her, hiding her wounds. When the sheets are already soaked through with her blood, I close both her eyelids, making her look like she’s just... asleep. Maybe a bit sick and weak, but still sleeping.

I feel like crying again, like puking, screaming, hitting something, throwing anything anywhere until the room is unrecognizable. Instead, I stand still. Instead, I clench my fists, take deep breaths, force myself to close my eyes and calm. The fuck. Down.

It takes all my might to force myself to leave Vriska’s side. I walk out of the room with a straight back and a set mind.

When the laboratory door opens, Sollux immediately shoot his head towards me; Karkat tries as well, though he can’t do much with his head strained as it is.

They both look at me, questioningly, as I release them. Karkat seems restless and anxious, eyes wide with panic.

“Is Vriska...?”

“Yeah.” I whisper as I remove Sollux’s mask, not wanting the troll behind me to finish his sentence. Karkat’s face twist to a sorrowful and pained one, mixed with fear, distress and rage. I know exactly how he feels. “And that’s why I’m here.”

Sollux and Karkat sit up, the psionic’s eyes glowing with the same fury as mine. I stand between them both and take deep breaths, trying to control my shaking hands.

No luck.

“We’re leaving this place. _Tomorrow_.” I announce, walking towards my abandoned backpack and handing Sollux my notebook. “I know you’re good with technology from what you guys told me... you think you can you hack the security system through here? The Wi-Fi connection is a bit weak, but--”

My speech is cut short as Sollux grins viciously at the machine in his lap, growling lowly under his breath.

“Yes.” He whispers, lifting the machine’s lid and booting it. His smile only widens. “ _Fuck. **Yes**.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay folks! I hope you can forgive me ;_; I think the next chapter will come out a lot faster, though I can't promise much, what with classes ending in three months.
> 
> Expect me!


	6. Chapter 6

Breathe.

Wipe the floors, scrub the tiles, freshen the room.

Breathe.

Walk to my room, look calm, relax. Pretend nothing is wrong.

And breathe.

I think of the letters I just sent out, to my friends and family, and their meaning. I think of the ones I sent them the last two months, the messages. The ones from the last two weeks. I think of what I am about to do.

Breathe, John, just _breathe_.

By the time I come back to the underground labs I am slightly out of breath from jogging. Karkat is pacing around, seemingly impatient, and he immediately looks at me as I open the door.

“ _Time_.” He growls, and I think he’s trying to say that I took a really long time to come back. I nod and close the door, walking towards them.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m really sorry, you guys. How’s it going, Sollux?”

Sollux doesn’t answer, keeps typing away furiously on the keyboards of the notebook, and Karkat sighs. When I look at him, he shrugs.

“Normal.” He mutters, and I snort, understanding.

“Okay. so.” I say, placing my backpack over one of the tables. Karkat approaches me and peeks inside as I slide the zipper open. “I brought some clothes, money, and food. It’ll probably be enough to last us for a while, I think.” I pull out a baggy grey sweater and hand it to Karkat, who looks at it like it’s offended him personally. “Take it. I guess you must be tired of walking around in your birthday suit.”

“Brith-de-sut.” Karkat repeats mechanically, warily taking the ratty sweater in his hands and scrutinously examining it, and I snort.

“Close enough. Do you need help putting it on?”

He looks at me and growls, his red eyes burning holes into my own. the sight still manages to send a shiver down my spine, even after so long, and he growls deep in his throat. “No stupid,” He says, flipping the sweater and putting it on. it falls onto his thin limbs and effectively hides his grey skin, the hood protruding up with the volume of his messy hair and short horns, effectively shading his eyes and face.

“Alright, lemme just...” I say, coming closer and adjusting the hood over his face, trying my best to hide as much of his features as possible. I step back and nod, evaluating my work. “Ok, this will have to do.” I conclude with a nod, and Karkat looks down, hiding his fingers into the hoodie’s front pockets.

He makes this low, clicking and whirring noise into the neck of the hoodie, his eyes drooping a little as he lowers his face and tries to disappear a bit further into it. “Good.” He murmurs, eyes nearly closing. I giggle, pulling the jeans from inside my bag.

“Here, now put these on.”

Karkat pulls his hands out of the pockets with some hesitation, and eyes the jeans in his hands like they’ve personally offended him. When he pulls them on I step forward to zip and button it up, since Karkat seemed to be wondering why they wouldn’t stay up on his bony hips, and fix the hoodie over the jeans. Finally I get a pair of sneakers from the bottom of the bag and help Karkat put them on, hiding his trimmed claws and grey-ish feet.

“There! You’re all ready to blend in with the humans!” I say, and Karkat frowns at that, looking back at Sollux. With a nod, I reach into the bag, handing Karkat a pair of pants and another old hoodie I own. “That will probably be slightly too small for Sollux, but it will have to do for now.” I say, and Karkat nods, though I’m not sure if he completely understands what I mean.

He walks over to Sollux, touching his bare shoulder, and the alien jumps, looks up at Karkat with his unnervingly blank, colorful and wide eyes as he notices his new outfit. Karkat murmurs low words in their weird clicking language, and Sollux nods, taking the bundle of clothes from his friend’s hands.

I reorganize the stuff inside my bag, thinking of my car and where it’s parked, and how little chance we’ll have of just sauntering to it without being noticed. Soon it’ll be day, and even sooner people will realize someone’s trying to shut down the security cameras of the facility. Everything we do will be not only quick and reckless, but it’ll also be a shot in the dark.

For a brief moment I realize it’s highly probable I won’t make it, and will probably be arrested. Most likely I’ll never see my family and friends again.

An ache starts in my chest, and when I look to the side, Karkat is fussing over Sollux’s jeans, who won’t stay up on his hips even after buttoning it up. I chuckle and smile, thinking to myself that I could never sleep again if I didn’t at least _try_.

I have to at least try, for them.

Otherwise no one else will.

“Here, lemme help you.” I say, unbuckling my belt and walking towards them. They eye me warily, but allow me to come closer, and I swiftly place the leather around Sollux’s hips, closing it tightly. The jeans look puffy, extremely oversized on the troll, but when I put the hoodie over it it’s almost as if it fits him perfectly.

He nods to me, muttering something I’ve learned is probably “thank you” in their own language, and he kneels again over his computer, fingers swiftly returning to their frantic pace. I sit next to them and fold Karkat’s jeans cuffs, slightly shorter on him since I’m slightly taller, and wait for Sollux to finish for what feels like endless hours.

Suddenly the computer’s black and white screen are replaced by moving images, who flicker occasionally. I widen my eyes, suddenly interested, and realize that these are the feed of all cameras around the facility.

“Holy shit...” I whisper, and Sollux grins. With a final jab on the “enter” button, all screens black out, and it’s then that hits me.

The clock is ticking.

“We gotta move.”

\---

My bloodpusher beats furiously against my chest cavity the moment John’s voice turn from impressed to somber.

He gets up, pulls me by the arm, and I pull him along as well. John roughly presents Sollux with the open bag, and he immediately takes the hint, pushing the now closed computer inside of it, and off the three of us go, out the door and jogging down the white, cold corridors.

“We gotta take the stairs. It’ll be less noticeable.” John says, and even if I don’t know much of what he means, I nod along, following him to wherever he’s taking us, trusting and hoping he knows what he’s doing and where he’s going.

He opens a heavy metal door that cringes in its hinges, and the long, tall sets of stairs shock me for a moment, makes me remember the moment I was captured, but Sollux swiftly makes his way up, so I swallow my fear and follow him, John right on our tow.

Three sets of stairs later I see Sollux is panting vigorously, so long after doing any exercise that the bare minimum already makes him exhausted. My joints and muscles burn and ache as well, but I ignore them, instead looping one arm around his back and under his armpit to help him out. He grunts, but accepts the assistance, and John hops up a few steps ahead of us.

“Just a bit more, guys, we can’t stop for rest now, I’m so sorry.” John whines, and I ignore him completely, teeth clenched as sweat beads up on my brows.

When we finally reach another metal door identical to the one downstairs I remember the ungodly loud noise it made and freeze. It’s not great to bring attention to our group, but both opening it quickly or carefully will draw attention to us.

“Stay. Here.” John half murmurs, half shouts, gesturing at us with open palms, and I nod, Sollux still panting and hanging limply next to me.

He holds the knob, turns it, walks out and closes it behind himself, engulfing the two of us in the silence of the empty hallway, only broken by Sollux’s heavy breathing. Not ten seconds later he reopens it, gestures for us to come out, and we do.

“Okay, I think we’re cool for now. We just gotta go through this door to the--” he says, walking only slightly ahead of us, and he turns to the right before stopping dead on his tracks. A man that we cannot see shouts at John, and I watch in horror as all the color on his rosy cheeks vanish in a second.

“ _Stop!!!_ ”

“RUN!” He screams, turning back and pulling the two of us back where we came from, pushing open a different, apparently random door to our left as heavy boots follow us into wherever it is we’re now going.

A meowbeast trapped inside a labyrinth filled with musclebeasts. That is what we are, I think feebly as I run after John, my hold to Sollux’s arm tightening to the point of probably bruising him, but I can’t, for the love of me, care right now. The first gunshot is heard not a minute later, after plenty of ignored warnings for us to stop and freeze and hold. I feel it echoing throughout the white walls and ceilings of the new corridor we’re in, penetrating the feeble wooden door we just went through and all I can remember is my dear, powerful sickles, and how I ripped that soldier’s head off that day with them, so many sweeps ago. How I wish I had them now, if only not to feel completely unempowered against these aliens with gunpowder and fire weapons.

My legs, once thick and powerful, now thin and weak, take me through the rooms John goes through as far as I can possibly go, as fast as I can muster, and along the way I see glimpses of other people, innocent people scared and unknowing what to do, as well as doors and equipments and _windows_. completely inaccessible windows, surrounded by furniture, by humans, and John looks at them with a desperate look in his blue eyes. I feel like he is leading us blindly, hoping he’ll find his way out somehow out of pure instinct, but my breaths are already coming rapidly in and out, in and out of my too weak body in not enough quantities, my bloodpusher demanding too much of the not-quite-right oxygen of this weird planet’s atmosphere. I cannot fathom how Sollus is even standing behind me at this point, and all I want is for this all to be _over_.

My hold to his arm is the only physical thing that is keeping the psiionic from falling behind. He was never a man of action. He was always the brains of the complex, did the thinking for all of us. Helped me whenever I didn’t want him, was there when I needed him the most.

I can clearly hear him wheezing with every inhalation, breath laboured and much, much worse than my own, which is already painful to the point of unbearable, and I worry for him behind the thick fog of adrenaline and pure fear that currently is my mind.

After walking through what seems to be a food abluption block of sorts, John opens a set of double doors that lead to a wide room lined with tables, and we find ourselves face to face with at least a dozen of big soldiers standing sentinel not ten meters away from us. John hesitates, and when they raise their guns he shouts, tries to pull the two of us out of the fucking way, and I can hardly process what is happening before he’s yanking on my arm, bullets ricocheting on the wall and ripping a chunk of debris to the floor in the exact place where my head was just a second ago.

“Shit!!” He says between clenched teeth, sprinting to the side and throwing his weight against a big, black industrial door to our left as the men reload their guns with new bullets, pulls them up and aims at our group once again, and my patience finally runs out. With a growl that you hope sounds more threateningly than tired, I let go of Sollux and throw my shoulder into the door, which breaks off its hinges and gives, and immediately John pulls himself and Sollux through the arch.

It all happens so fast, the whole act doesn’t last more than three seconds, but it’s still too long. Another round of shot is heard and a high pitched scream reverberates through the building.

I widen my eyes, glowing dimly in the darkness of the room, which apparently seems to be some sort of storage, filled with boxes and shelves, and look back, chest tight and breath quicker and quicker, afraid of what I might see, afraid of gaining confirmation of what I think just happened. And sure enough Sollux’s hand is covering his shoulder, futilely trying to stop the flow of dark yellow blood which quickly soaks his hoodie.

“Come on!” John says over the heavy footsteps of the men in the previous room, throwing Sollux over his shoulder in a swift motion, which makes him whimper _loudly_ , and I start sprinting again, afraid to look back, the faint outline of a small door at a corner on the other side of the room indicating daylight. Indicating _freedom_.

I don’t stop to look for knobs, not when there are soldiers at the door I just ripped off the wall, shooting at us again, having a bit of a hard time because of the dark. A bullet misses my left ear by a hairline, and my ear rings with the loud noise it makes once it passes by it. I feel the warmth of the bullet against my thick skin, the smell of slightly burnt hair where it nicked a few of my black strands, and I try to imagine that bullet searing, digging deeply into the flesh of my shoulder, and I remember the thick needles that hurt like hell and weren’t half the size or firepower of those things.

I can’t help but think of Sollux, whimpering on John’s shoulder, sobbing with pain, and I roar again, the thought and the anger giving me the strenght I need, and I throw myself against the flat wood, and when it easily falls to the pavement outside I can’t even have a moment to feel pride, hissing from the sunrise shine against my blown and sensitive pupils.

“The car! The car, let’s go!” John screams, sprinting past me, and I wobble behind him with some difficulty, the adrenaline wearing off slightly as the pain in my bones from the forceful onslaughts aches and burns like a bitch. Another bullet buzzes past us, burying deep into the grass and dirt, and I start running again, now slightly less blind, the sun bright but thankfully not scorching our skin thanks to the time of the day and the baggy hoodies John’s given us.

The dirt digs into our heels and the grass slips on our soles, and all around I can see more soldiers appearing and what seems to be the faint noise of a hovercraft somewhere nearby. After not too long, we spot a dark blue contraption with wheels - holy fuck is _that_ the car thing John was referring to? - amidst some trees, partially hidden, and we make our way right towards it. John opens a rear door and almost throws Sollux onto it. Some bullets eat into the trees’ bark, and others start destroying the car, breaking windows and digging holes into the bodywork, and John yelps, running around it to open a door on the other side.

“ _Get in!!!_ ” He yells as he bangs his door closed, and I growl, quickly climbing in with Sollux and closing the door behind us. John yelps when new bullets dig into the steel, and he ducks his head, the whole vehicle roaring to life. “Hold on!!!”

In the next second there are at least ten bullets buzzing past us, even more men shouting and running, their boots and gunpowder fueled weapons making a symphony of terror, all slightly muted by the loud noise of John’s car sliding against the grass, killing plants and grass in its wake and running straight for the sand.

A few bullets fly inches from my head, so I duck, glass showering over my back, and I lean over Sollux to protect him from the shards, my own shaky hands now pressing over his unusually pale one to help stop the blood flow, and goddamn it, like this I can feel exactly how damn _cold_ he is, like a purple blood. Even colder than Equius was.

“Sollux. _Sollux_.” I whisper desperate as the troll’s eyelashes flutter, halfway gone to dreamland. I slap his face hard, thrice, and he opens his eyes, baring his fangs weakly before realizing it’s just me.

“Damn.” He groans, coughing. Thankfully, his breathing devices are not filling with blood yet, so he still breathes, though his face contorts into a painful expression every time his chest rises. “Thith hurtht, KK.”

“Shit, I know, I know, fuck, just hold on ok? Hold on, hold on, we’re gonna... we’re...”

“Gonna do what? Fix me up? Patch me up and make me better? As if.” he scoffs, wincing when John makes an abrupt turn and we have to hold ourselves to not fall to the floor of the vehicle.

“John!!” I growl  threateningly, and John hastily apologizes as he makes the car go even faster. “Fuck, I don’t know ok, Sollux? I don’t, but you can be goddamn sure that you’re not gonna die on me, you are fucking not gonna die here on me, you’re not gonna leave me alone you dense bulge muncher son of a grubing snailing motherfucker!!!”

“I’m not gonna leave you alone, KK you... you thtupid fuckface. You have... the human. Elthe who’th gonna wipe your butt for you... right?”

“No, Sollux, _no_.” and I would never admit, never fucking _ever_ , but my hands are pressing tighter, despite the fact that I still feel blood flowing through my fingers, despite knowing I’m crying, thick droplets of reddish tears falling onto Sollux’s now slightly yellow cheeks, the corner of his lips quirking up into a smile, his huge and awkwardly protruding fangs peeking from behind them.

He never looked so pitiful.

“Heh. Sorry, dude. Really am.”

“Stop.” I say in english, loud and sharp, and it makes John jump in his seat.

“Can’t, gotta track them off, there’s an abandoned--”

“ _STOP!!! NOW!!!_ ”

John goes silent, shoulders stiff. My voice sounded pretty scary, even for my own ears.

“There’s a downslope right ahead. A natural rock formation. It’ll shelter us from the daylight and we’ll be able to hide from whoever might be looking for us. I’ll stop there.”

I understand only half of what he said, what with him adding random confusing words into his too long sentence, but I can sort of understand that he doesn’t want to stop in an open space, where anyone could spot us. I don’t want him to do that either. I’m not stupid.

He stops not a minute later but it still feels like too long. When he opens the door behind us it’s like I can’t move, the unusually warm air of the outside so unlike the constantly chilliness of the laboratory we spent what felt like half of our entire lives. And despite the heat, Sollux’s hand is cold as ice.

John reaches inside, gets Sollux by his sides, and pulls him off. I help him transfer him to a smooth rock shaded from the sun, and moving him there seems to have made him bleed twice as fast. I don’t think he has much blood left in him, now. Nothing but a blood transfusion can save him at this fucking point.

He looks at the human, who is crying his weird, clear tears, and smiles, always the fucking gentleman, even in his death bed, and whispers a thank you in Alternian. The human doesn’t understand, but he nods as if he does.

When he turns to me, _me_ , his leader and friend and companion, kneeling next to his limp body, me who is undecided whether to hold him or leave him, Sollux raises a shaky hand, touching my arm. I flung towards him, wrap myself around his neck, and he rests his head against my clothed shoulder, mindful of his horns. The pitiful bastard.

“Don’t give up. Die fighting, if you have to. Like me, like Vriska, like _everyone_. Make good use of Vriska’s luck.”

“Vriska’s luck is shit.” I mutter, voice broken and choked by tears. “You’re _dying_ , aren’t you?”

“Yeah. But you and John are unharmed. Don’t say bullshit. We would’ve gotten a lot worse if it wasn’t for her. You know that.”

“Fuck you, Sollux. Fuck you _so much_.”

“Heh. Love you too, nubbyhorns.”

\---

They exchange their goodbyes, because no matter how much I want it to not be true, it’s happening, someone else is fucking _dying_ right before my eyes and I can’t do shit about it, and I feel like I’m intruding some really intimate moment that should’ve been completely hidden from outsider’s eyes.

When Sollux takes his final breath, chest unmoving, and Karkat keeps sobbing over his broken body, all I can think of doing is move around in the trunk of the car, look into the clothes and accessories I brought to disguise us.

The extra pair of pants and shirts inside just reminds me that I’ve failed, even if just partially. Someone else died, and I didn’t do a damn thing to stop it.

I take out the clothes and the pair of sunglasses the trolls would need, and place them on the sand, in a respectful distance from Karkat.The extra clothes I then stuff inside my bag, leaving one pair of pants and shirt out that Karkat will certainly need to change since his own are now caked with blood, and both sunglasses I put inside my pants pocket, thinking I can maybe just use the extra pair that... well.

That Sollux won’t be needing anymore.

After about ten minutes of sitting inside the car and watching the sun rise completely in the sky, the loud sounds of helicopters searching for us is unmistakable. We can’t stay here anymore, unless we want to be found, and consequently make Sollux’s sacrifice in vain.

I step up and walk towards Karkat, placing a hand on his unmoving shoulder.

“Hey, buddy. I’m sorry, but we gotta go.” I tell him, as gently as possible, and he looks to the side, staring at the dusty ground with blank, swollen eyes. Slowly, I pull him up by the elbow, bringing him away from his friend’s corpse, and when he’s standing right in front of me, squinting because of the brightness, I take out the sunglasses, handing one of them to him.

“Here, look. Put these on.”

Karkat, though, doesn’t even react. His brows furrow at the black lens, and I open the frames of one of them, putting it on my face in front of my own prescription glasses.

“Like this, see?” I say, taking them off my face and offering them back to Karkat. “Put them on. For the sun.”

But he doesn’t. Instead, he stares at the glasses in confused silence for a few more seconds, and then he downright howls, snatching both glasses off my hands and into his closed fist, and I can faintly make out the sound of the cheap plastic cracking behind his horrified cry. Next thing I know he’s punching me in the chest, drawing all the air out of my lungs, the first hit soon followed by the second, and I’m falling, collapsing onto the hard sand, and Karkat’s still screaming, eyes wide and filled with rage, with _grief_ , punching me again and again and again. The blood trickling down his closed palm spots my shirt with what I note is a very human looking red blood, and even though I know he could probably crack my ribs, maybe even kill me with those strikes, judging from how easily he tore down those huge metal doors, he doesn’t. He only hurt me enough to bruise, and even so not badly at all.

After god knows how long his screams die down, open hands cradling the shards of what is left of the cheap sunglasses I gave him, but his tears keep flowing from his eyes, like a downpour down his face. He slumps forward, almost as if unable to hold himself up on his own, and sobs on my shoulder as I stroke his hair and try, somehow, to reassure him that everything will be okay, even though I know it’s a huge fucking lie.

I know he probably doesn’t understand a word of what I’m saying either, but I know that that’s not what he needs right now.

After what feels like eternity, the helicopters seem to fade away. It almost feels like a miracle.

I think  about Vriska, and her gift to me, and if she’s really the one responsible for all this fortunate events.

Slowly, I get up, adjusting Karkat in my lap. His tears are slowly stopping, his expressionnow serene, almost blank even. I can see Sollux from the corner of my eye, the blowing wind covering him in a thin layer of sand.

When he finally calms down and stops sobbing, I help him to sit up, and pull his hand towards me. One by one, as gently as possible, I pluck the glass shards off his hand, and he watches me while I do so, eyes unfocused and horribly painful to look.

His wounds are almost completely healed up by the time I’m done, so I just curl his fingers up in his palm, and he holds it close to his chest in response. I look at Sollux, and my car, still so very easily noticeable, and take a deep breath.

“We’ll have to go by foot.” I say, looking down at Karkat, but he’s not listening to me anymore, so with a deep breath, I dislodge him from my lap and get up, catching him by his arm and lifting him to his feet.

He can change his bloody shirt later, I think to myself as we walk away from the rocky formation, and once we are under the already hot sun I look back, at where Sollux’s body is slowly disappearing beneath the sand along with my car. Where I’m leaving behind the remains of my old life. I looked forward, at the road ahead, and try to figure out what to do from now on.

  
  


\---

  


\---

 

It had been our second night out, and Karkat was already showing signs of over exhaustion. It’s my fault; forcing a dude that’s been strapped to a table for over a year to push himself so much can’t be fucking easy, but there’s not much either one of us could do at that point. I fixed the strap of my backpack over my shoulder and kept walking a little ways behind Karkat beneath the scorching sun.

The sound of the wind and plants moving were suddenly interrupted by an unfamiliar shrill nearby, and I looked around, trying to make out where the sound was coming from, Karkat’s ears also twitching with interest. One step, two, three, and when I looked down and to the left I shrieked loudly, finally spotting the sand colored rattlesnake moving right next to my leg..

It happened all too fast, too blurry. I jumped back as the snake pounced, before I could even begin to process that yes, it was indeed planning on gnawing on my leg, but thankfully Karkat had already turned around towards the uncommon sound and jumped at it as soon as its slithery body left the ground. His clawed hands closed around the muscled body just as its jaw had opened widely enough to fit around the diameter of my calf, and _squeezed_ , the snake trashing and hissing and its tail rattling as loud as ever as Karkat held it far from his body and eyed it curiously.

I watched from the floor, the blood in my veins cold and pumping fast, the heart inside my chest beating wildly and making me dizzy, as Karkat’s hands tightened around the snake’s body, muscles rigid as the creature slowed its movements, gagged, and stilled completely, falling limp in Karkat’s hands.

My shivering arms and trembling legs were barely enough to keep me seated, so I really didn’t even consider getting up anytime soon. Karkat turned the creature on his hand around, examining it as his brows furrowed further and further, the confusion and curiosity evident on his eyes.

Without a warning, the troll shoved the reptile towards me, making me shriek – again – as I was still shocked and jumpy from yet another near-death experience so soon after the first one. After making sure I was breathing ok to talk normally, Karkat narrowed his eyes, glaring at me as usual.

“What. Is. It.” He said, slow and sharp, and I stuttered feebly, trying to find the right words.

“U-uh… it’s a, um, a snake? And it, well, it bites. Sharp teeth.” I pointed at the snake’s teeth from its hanging mouth, then again at my own, and Karkat leaned closer. “It’s poisonous? Poison. It’s a deadly substance. Poison kills. So, uh. If it bit me, I’d die. Slowly. And painfully. Dead. You know?” And yes, Karkat grinning as he finally seemed to understand my horror for the animal in his hand meant he knew. He looked pretty terrifying.

I thanked him, asked him to throw the snake away, and he did, looking down at the corpse lying on the ground a few ways away, grin long gone and expression thoughtful. I rose to my feet, dusted the sand off my jeans, and smiled at the troll, who growled lowly deep in his throat in response.

“Come, go.” He muttered, and I nodded, walking with him side by side.

I know I am a searched man. I know I am a fugitive being tracked by the police, considered highly dangerous and threatening. I know Karkat is all of those things as well when I looked at him then, carefully eyeing the sand he kicked high with his shoes.

I thought if he remembered of Sollux, seeing the snake limp and dead and left behind, half-buried by the windy sand and brown desert grass, _discarded_ like a useless ragged doll, and it only served to remind myself why I was doing this, why is this worth it, why on earth do I _need_ to do this.

The answer was, and still is, simple.

_For_ _him_.

I pull my glasses off my face and throw them out the window of the car we’re hitchhiking in, figuring they make me too recognizable, then catch a piece of my black fringe with my thumb and forefinger and place my free hand over Karkat’s shoulder.

He immediately relaxes, and sighs through his nose.

“Say,“ I whisper, and Karkat turns to eye me from under his hood, as pulled down over his face as humanly possible. I watch as a small village quickly approaches our vehicle over the horizon, trying not to let myself be heard over the radio station’s musical broadcast and the drunk singing of the teenage boys on the front seat. Somehow, I smile to myself despite it all. “How do you think I’d look with bleached hair?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'M SORRY FOR TAKING SO LONG TO FINISH THIS AAAH
> 
> I HOPE YOU ENJOYED THE RIDE NOW GO READ MOSTLY HARMLESS GO DO IT!!!


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